- InfiniBand’s long dominance is facing real pressure from Ethernet’s open standards movement
- Meta and Nvidia are betting on openness to scale AI networks
- The ESUN project connects industry rivals through shared networking ambitions
The Open Compute Project (OCP) has announced a new initiative known as Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking (ESUN), which aims to develop open standards for high-performance connections within artificial intelligence clusters.
This collaboration brings together companies such as Meta, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco and OpenAI to explore how Ethernet can compete with existing interconnects such as InfiniBand in large data centers.
Other companies joining the collaboration include Arista, ARM, Broadcom, HPE Networking, Marvell, Microsoft and Oracle.
Open network for AI clusters
InfiniBand has long dominated the high-speed AI networking market, accounting for about 80% of the infrastructure connecting GPUs and accelerators.
However, the ESUN group believes that Ethernet’s maturity, cost-effectiveness and interoperability make it a strong candidate for scaling up AI clusters.
Unlike proprietary systems, Ethernet’s widespread familiarity among engineers can help reduce the complexity of handling massive AI workloads.
Proponents argue that using Ethernet as an open standard will allow operators to scale infrastructure while lowering costs.
OCP’s new AI tools initiative builds on previous work under its SUE-Transport (SUE-T) program, which explored Ethernet transport for multi-processor systems.
ESUN’s participants meet regularly to define standards for switch behavior, including protocol headers, error handling, and lossless data transfer.
The group will also study how network design affects load balancing and memory ordering within GPU-based systems.
It plans to coordinate with the Ultra Ethernet Consortium and the IEEE 802.3 standards to ensure alignment across the broader Ethernet ecosystem.
Several companies have already developed Ethernet-based products aimed at AI scaling—Broadcom’s Tomahawk Ultra switch, for example, supports up to 77 billion packets per second, and Nvidia’s Spectrum-X platform also combines Ethernet with acceleration hardware for AI clusters.
However, Meta, who co-founded OCP in 2011, sees ESUN as a natural extension of their push for open hardware in data centers.
Still, observers note that replacing established InfiniBand networks would require Ethernet to prove itself under the most demanding AI workloads, where latency and reliability are critical.
ESUN’s success will depend on balancing openness with performance. Proponents see a future where AI systems run on interoperable hardware using standardized Ethernet technologies.
But given the scale and sensitivity of AI infrastructure, it remains uncertain whether the industry’s momentum will shift decisively away from proprietary interconnects.
So far, ESUN represents an ambitious effort, and whether it can match InfiniBand’s performance remains to be seen.
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