Ethernet Switch Chips are Now Infected with AI: Broadcom Announces Trident 5-X12

[AleksandarK]

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic this year, and everything is now an AI processor, from CPUs to GPUs, NPUs, and many others. However, it was only a matter of time before we saw an integration of AI processing elements into the networking chips. Today, Broadcom announced its new Ethernet switching silicon called Trident 5-X12. The Trident 5-X12 delivers 16 Tb/s of bandwidth, double that of the previous Trident generation while adding support for fast 800G ports for connection to Tomahawk 5 spine switch chips. The 5-X12 is software-upgradable and optimized for dense 1RU top-of-rack designs, enabling configurations with up to 48x200G downstream server ports and 8x800G upstream fabric ports. The 800G support is added using 100G-PAM4 SerDes, which enables up to 4 m DAC and linear optics.

However, this is not only a switch chip on its own. Broadcom has added AI processing elements in an inference engine called NetGNT (Networking General-purpose Neural-network Traffic-analyzer). It can detect common traffic patterns and optimize data movement across the chip. Specifically, the company has listed an example of the system doing AI/ML workloads. In that case, NetGNT performs intelligent traffic analysis to avoid network congestion in these workloads. For example, it can detect the so-called "incast" patterns in real-time, where many flows converge simultaneously on the same port. By recognizing the start of incast early, NetGNT can invoke hardware-based congestion control techniques to prevent performance degradation without added latency.



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[AusWolf]

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

 

[dannyr]

does AI drop or delay 'some' data package?

 

[TumbleGeorge]

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

The Head of Marketing to Employees: Anyone who doesn't use "AI" in an ad will be fired immediately.

 

[Chaitanya]

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

Just like how dedicated accelarators on CPUs(Sapphire Rapids and Apple M) are thing and will grow in numbers similarly having dedicated circuit for traffic control on NIC should be thing to reduce additional stress on CPUs.

 

[Chrispy_]

This is the most "Skynet" AI news so far.
I, for one, look forward to the robot uprising - it can't be any worse than the current reality which seems dead set of meeting the predictions of 2006's Idiocracy.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Just like how dedicated accelarators on CPUs(Sapphire Rapids and Apple M) are thing and will grow in numbers similarly having dedicated circuit for traffic control on NIC should be thing to reduce additional stress on CPUs.

My 3Com 10/100 NIC was already AI enabled around 2000 .

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

"Infected"....haha, so true....I'm so sick of it already, especially on Laptops. They claim AI is in a dozen different things, but never once explain in a straight forward way how this actually benefits the user. Worse yet, I read a leak/rumor that apparently OEMs are extremely disappointed by thr performance of Meteor Lake and will resort to "focusing on and marketing AI feature and the GPU instead"....which means the AI thing is only going to get worse.

 

[stimpy88]

Realtime manipulation of information.

 

[Prima.Vera]

My toilet paper is infused with AI.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

extremely disappointed by thr performance of Meteor Lake

What is problem to make fake frames on windows desktop screensaver?

 

[AsRock]

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

How is it ?, there is no such thing ass true AI. If any thing the word should be fake.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

i can already see network admins jumping with glee at this fantastic idea... NOT

the dream of every networking guy ever: a obscure proprietary black-box doing non-deterministic and random shit to the data packets!

¡Best troubleshooting ever!

 

[lemonadesoda]

"AI" as marketing spin has jumped the shark

 

[bonehead123]

My toilet paper is infused with AI.

Yep, and if you didn't wipe as precisely and thoroughly as it thinks you should, it will immediately deliver a 110v shocker notification to your bum every 2.8375 seconds until it is satisfied with the results, hehehe

 

[evernessince]

does AI drop or delay 'some' data package?

"NetGNT can look for a traffic pattern common in AI/ML workloads called “incast” in which many packet flows all converge on the same port and buffer at roughly the same time causing congestion. NetGNT can recognize this pattern in real-time as it begins and invoke congestion-control techniques to avoid degraded network performance. And since NetGNT runs in hardware at full line rate— there is no impact to throughput or latency."

Broadcom Inc. | Connecting Everything

www.broadcom.com

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

"NetGNT works in parallel to augment the standard packet-processing pipeline. The standard pipeline is one-packet/one-path, meaning that it looks at one packet as it takes a specific path through the chip’s ports and buffers. NetGNT, in contrast, is an ML inference engine and can be trained to look for different types of traffic patterns that span the entire chip."

i can already see network admins jumping with glee at this fantastic idea... NOT

the dream of every networking guy ever: a obscure proprietary black-box doing non-deterministic and random shit to the data packets!

¡Best troubleshooting ever!

According to broadcom the AI can be trained to recognize different traffic patterns. So long as network engineers are allowed to enabled, disable, and train the AI themselves I'd say that's a pretty good level of control. If you have control over the training you can trace back outcomes to the responsible inputs and how they interacted with the responsible neurons and weights which in turn you can use to improve the AI. Theoretically the use of AI should be able to improve traffic control as for many enterprise networks an algorithm based approach cannot optimize for every single network traffic scenario whereas an AI can. It depends on the network though, specialized traffic control algorithms will still be superior for networks with very specific traffic patterns.

 

[Solaris17]

i can already see network admins jumping with glee at this fantastic idea... NOT

the dream of every networking guy ever: a obscure proprietary black-box doing non-deterministic and random shit to the data packets!

¡Best troubleshooting ever!

what do you mean? Do you work with these systems? This isnt the first one ever. Companies have had AI at the edge for awhile now. The primary use case is DDoS mitigation and modification of routes/ASN and other IP black holeing mitigations. All of which can be reversed or modified.

This is much faster then rule base mitigation (though most use it in conjunction) there are still inline filtering technologies like wan guard, or corero, maybe you have something from fortinet or you have your APIs tied into akami or cloudflare or noction so you can re route traffic.

Sounds like a lot of "AI bad and I dont understand" in here.


Where are you located? You telling me your network engineers are logged into a terminal watching the L3 or centurylink connection over seabone to south america? We hvent done it that way since like the early 80s. You should talk to your NOC and network engineers and get some budget to up your tooling.

 

[FeelinFroggy]

This is the most "Skynet" AI news so far.
I, for one, look forward to the robot uprising - it can't be any worse than the current reality which seems dead set of meeting the predictions of 2006's Idiocracy.

Congrats! Best comment of the day. I think I'll have Fudruckers for lunch.

 

[R0H1T]

My 3Com 10/100 NIC was already AI enabled around 2000 .

Well does it serve you targeted ads based on your "unique" taste? No, then it's obviously not enough

 

[TheEndIsNear]

Infected I love the use of that word in this instance

 

[Vayra86]

The Head of Marketing to Employees: Anyone who doesn't use "AI" in an ad will be fired immediately.

... and the next ad campaign had 'AIGHT!' plastered over random products with this guy in it

 

[konga]

I'm one of the biggest AI haters there is, but this actually seems like a valid use case of ML technology, if they can actually make it performant enough to be faster than software-based solutions. The one thing ML excels at far beyond typical software-based solutions is pattern recognition. If they can make it recognize and react appropriately to traffic patterns in real time, then that's great, actually.

 

[fec32a4de]

How is it ?, there is no such thing ass true AI. If any thing the word should be fake.

LLM or ChatGPT, etc. the thing everyone calls AI is in fact AI. Artificial Intelligence.

Unlike neural network processors, which were previously called AI, neural network "thinks" and tries to come to a logical conclusion (like a standard living brain [lmao Jellyfish]).

AI is now being included into everything, but all it does it collect massive amount of information and picks the best response out of a hat. Shit supercomputers were built for. There is no logic or thinking involved.
It is artificial, in every sense of the word.

 

[Pumper]

"Infected" is a good word. Traffic control could be done via drivers/software 20 years ago, I don't see why we need AI for this.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same 20 year old software, but they call it "AI" now, because it's the buzzword of the year.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

... and the next ad campaign had 'AIGHT!' plastered over random products with this guy in it

View attachment 323673

Oh, Sasha the comedian?