Nvidia introduced Spectrum-6, an Ethernet switching platform moving 102.4 terabits per second, double the previous generation.
Switching is the equipment linking machines to one another. In a cluster with hundreds of accelerators on the same task, the transit time between machines determines the performance of the whole, however fast each individual piece.
Doubling capacity in a single generation is a fast pace for network equipment and shows where pressure concentrated. Traffic between processors is growing faster than conventional electrical connections can carry, the same diagnosis behind the foundries' race toward co-packaged optics.
For anyone not building data centres, the effect is indirect and real: it improves the economics of renting capacity and helps sustain the falling cost per task seen in the period's model launches.
The market reading is that the contest stopped being only about who makes the fastest accelerator and now includes who controls what connects them.