HPC is not AI and AI is not HPC. However, the number of technologies in common are starting to come together in a high speed networking version of a Venn diagram that could become the best mash up since Lincoln Park and JayZ.
I was fortunate enough to attend SC’25 as an assignment for my day job. Along with Dane Adams of (KY)NUG, Louie Mattucci of (OH)NUG we helped staff a booth for our employer. We arrived on Sunday and stayed through the start of the SCInet tear down Thursday evening.
First a note about SCInet - Wowzers. What a network of networks. The buildout included 800GbE everywhere and contributions from each of the usual networking suspects that you’d expect to donate equipment and staffing. These folks begin the design process immediately after the end of the proceeding year. They are on site about a month prior to the event to receive equipment shipments, make cabling plans and dole out assignments to the hoard of volunteers that pull together the multiple Internet connections, outside plant transport for traffic from HigherEd and Research agencies. Along with wired, wireless and an entire security team dedicated to trying to keep the infrastructure safe from attackers looking to exploit this enviably sized annual network. A labor of love with meaningful contributions to our industry.
A delightful aspect of SCInet, and the conference overall, is the effort to be inclusive of young technology enthusiasts. Kids ranging from grade schoolers to high school STEM classes to college computer science students are invited to tour the SCInet data center and in some cases to get hands-on experience of standing up and operating a diverse network that must live by open standards and interoperability. Can you imagine yourself at the earliest stages of your career getting a chance to see these packets in action or to get an audience with the leading vendors and industry luminaries? Priceless.
Image 1 - Students walking through the SCInet data center
Image 2 - Students attending SC’25
On to the show...
The conference reminded me of GTC San Jose hosted in March of this year. In that there weren’t just accelerator, network, compute and storage vendors present. It seemed as if half of the enormous show floor had facility specialists, power experts and liquid cooling wizards. On the liquid cooling side, those of you who love chemistry would enjoy the variable combinations under experimentation and deployment as they work on finding the best suited refrigerant formulas. Also, expect much more IOT as these uber sensitive solutions need new sensors that can handle real-time monitoring and fast-action remediation capabilities.
Specific to the networking side of things, there were recurring questions throughout the week. Those practitioners making purchasing decisions right now are asking all of the networking vendors about adoption of UEC 1.0 related features. Are networking vendors adding Packet Trimming, LLR (Link Layer Retry), and updated Credit-based Flow Control algorithms? Is it true that the UET may come up with a solution that completely displaces RDMA? When will each vendor have 102.4T switching platforms shipping, not just prematurely announced? What is the expectation of the availability of 1.6Tbps optics and cables shipping in volume? Which Scale-Up offering takes hold? Will it be UALink, ESUN, SUE or some interoperable combination of all three deployed inside these racks? And is there any truth to the rumors that the major memory manufacturers have completely sold their manufacturing capacity and inventories through 2026?
The data center networking business continues to benefit from the all out accelerator arms race. For long-time industry veterans like myself, there hasn’t been a more exciting time in networking since we ditched the kaleidoscope of transport protocols and settled on IP and Ethernet. I can’t wait to see what challenges pop up next and how the industry adapts to meet the unabating demand that is sure to last for at least a few more years to come. Keep attending the NUGs, the Conferences and those online webinars. Continuing to network with your industry peers in developing and deploying open standards and ensuring interoperability is how we’ll witness our labors unfold into directions we never could have imagined.
