SAN JOSE, CA (GTC), Mar 21, 2025 – NVIDIA unveiled NVIDIA Spectrum-X and NVIDIA Quantum-X silicon photonics networking switches, which enable AI factories to connect millions of GPUs across sites, reducing energy consumption and operational costs. NVIDIA has integrated electronic circuits with optical communications on a large scale.
As AI factories expand, networks need advancements to match their demands. NVIDIA photonics switches offer an advanced networking solution. They integrate optics innovations with 4x fewer lasers to deliver 3.5x power efficiency, 63x greater signal integrity, 10x better network resiliency at scale, and 1.3x faster deployment than traditional methods.
“AI factories are a new class of data centers with extreme scale, and networking infrastructure must be reinvented to keep pace,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “By integrating silicon photonics directly into switches, NVIDIA is shattering the old limitations of hyperscale and enterprise networks and opening the gate to million-GPU AI factories.”
NVIDIA silicon photonics networking switches are available as part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet and NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand platforms.
The Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform delivers superior performance and 1.6x bandwidth density compared with traditional Ethernet for multi-tenant, hyperscale AI factories, including the largest supercomputer in the world.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics switches include multiple configurations, including 128 ports of 800Gb/s or 512 ports of 200Gb/s, delivering 100Tb/s total bandwidth, as well as 512 ports of 800Gb/s or 2,048 ports of 200Gb/s, for a total throughput of 400Tb/s.
NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics switches provide 144 ports of 800Gb/s InfiniBand based on 200Gb/s SerDes and use a liquid-cooled design to cool the onboard silicon photonics. NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics switches offer 2x faster speeds and 5x higher scalability for AI compute fabrics than the previous generation.
A Networked Ecosystem
NVIDIA’s silicon photonics ecosystem includes TSMC, Browave, Coherent, Corning Incorporated, Fabrinet, Foxconn, Lumentum, SENKO, SPIL, Sumitomo Electric Industries, and TFC Communication.
“A new wave of AI factories requires efficiency and minimal maintenance to achieve the scale required for next-generation workloads,” said C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC. “TSMC’s silicon photonics solution combines our strengths in both cutting-edge chip manufacturing and TSMC-SoIC 3D chip stacking to help NVIDIA unlock an AI factory’s ability to scale to a million GPUs and beyond, pushing the boundaries of AI.”
NVIDIA photonics will drive growth for a new wave of AI factories alongside pluggable optical transceiver technologies supported by companies like Coherent, Eoptolink, Fabrinet, and Innolight.
Availability
NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand switches are expected to be available later this year, with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet switches in 2026 from leading infrastructure and system vendors.
Source: NVIDIA
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corp. is an American tech company headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. Renowned for designing and manufacturing graphics processing units (GPUs), NVIDIA’s innovations have significantly impacted various sectors. The company’s products and services cater to industries such as gaming, where its GPUs enhance visual experiences; artificial intelligence (AI), providing high-performance computing solutions; automotive, contributing to autonomous vehicle technologies; and robotics, offering advanced AI perception and simulation tools. Over its more than three decades in business, NVIDIA has experienced substantial growth. In the fiscal quarter ending January 2025, the company reported record revenue of $39.3 billion and a net income of $22.1 billion. NVIDIA’s headquarters, designed to facilitate a flat organizational structure, emphasizes information flow and harmony between leadership and employees.