Broadcom is a major supplier of chips for Ethernet switches,
which are the primary way the computers inside conventional data centers are
connected to one another.
But the rise of AI applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT and
Alphabet's Bard have presented new challenges for the networks inside data
centers. In order to respond to questions with human-like answers, such systems
must be trained using huge amounts of data.
That job is far too big for one computer chip to handle.
Instead, the job must be split up over thousands of chips called graphics
processing units (GPUs), which then have to function like one giant computer to
work on the job for weeks or even months at a time. That makes the speed at
which the individual chips can communicate important.
Broadcom on Tuesday announced a new chip, Jericho3-AI, which
can connect up to 32,000 GPU chips together. The Jericho3-AI chip will compete
with another supercomputer networking technology called InfiniBand.
The biggest maker for InfiniBand gear is now Nvidia, which
purchased InfiniBand leader Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2019.
Nvidia is also the market leader in GPUs. While
Nvidia-Mellanox systems are some of the fastest supercomputers in the world,
many companies are reluctant to give up Ethernet, which is sold by a variety of
companies, to buy both their GPUs and networking gear from the same supplier,
said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of the core
switching group at Broadcom.
"Ethernet, you can get it from multiple vendors -
there's a lot of competition," Velaga said. "If we don't come out
with the best Ethernet switch, somebody else will. InfiniBand is a proprietary,
single-source, vertically integrated kind of a solution." © Reuters
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