NVIDIA Goes Ethernet for AI and Copies SuperNIC for BlueField-3 Brand

NVIDIA hot off naming its NVIDIA Grace Superchip now has a SuperNIC, copying a name from this research paper. The new branding is related to the BlueField-3 DPU being used as part of the company’s Ethernet networking for AI. NVIDIA is taking Spectrum-X/ Spectrum-4 and using it as a high-performance AI interconnect.

NVIDIA BlueField-3 Becomes a SuperNIC as NVIDIA Shows

At Computex 2023, the NVIDIA Computex 2023 Keynote featured the Spectrum 4 launch. NVIDIA’s 51.2T Ethernet switching platform can be configured for up to 64 ports of 800GbE or 128 ports of 400GbE.

The chip is massive and significantly larger than the Broadcom Tomahawk 4 64-port 400GbE Switch Chip we showed earlier this year.

NVIDIA is pairing this new switch with the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU that it is now calling a SuperNIC, apparently taking the name from the 2022 paper on arxiv. The DPU is the new 400Gbps capable adapter from NVIDIA.

The BlueField-3 DPU is a big update to the BlueField-2 that we have looked at in pieces like Logging Into a Mellanox NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU, How to Get NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU Running on Windows 11 Pro, NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU and VMware vSphere Demo, and ZFS without a Server Using the NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU.

We also built a cluster of these with an old AMD Threadripper Pro system, which is fun since this announcement is going live at the same time as the AMD Threadripper embargo lifts.

NVIDIA is taking the Spectrum-4 switch, the BlueField-3 DPU with the SuperNIC rebrand, and its Spectrum-X software and using it as an AI platform.

Final Words

Many organizations do not have the networking teams to support both Ethernet and InfiniBand, so pushing ahead with Ethernet-based networking for AI makes sense. NVIDIA is using its IP from its Mellanox acquisition to create an easier networking option for enterprises. With BlueField-3, it has the opportunity to do so using its newest 400GbE capable hardware.

Note: STH brought up the SuperNIC paper to NVIDIA before the company started using the new branding today, but we are unaware of how the FPGA-based SmartNIC “SuperNIC” solution relates to the BlueField-3 DPU, and we were unable to get an answer as to how they are related, or if NVIDIA just decided it was a good name to use.