Arista Networks has announced two new platforms supporting 400 Gigabit Ethernet. The new 400G fixed systems deliver the performance that hyperscale cloud networks and datacenters need for the growth of applications such as AI (artificial intelligence), machine learning, and serverless compute.

The Arista 7060X4 Series uses industry standard optics for 400G and offers the choice of two optical module form factors – OSFP and QSFP-DD. Both form factors offer a wide choice of 400G optics and cables, including optics that provide backward compatibility for 100G ports. This gives customers flexibility in building high density leaf spine networks to support the most demanding emerging applications, including 100G connectivity to servers and 400G connectivity in the leaf-spine fabric.

“We are delighted to introduce our first 400G switching platforms delivering four times the throughput, double the price/performance and double the power efficiency of our previous 100G platforms,” said Andreas Bechtolsheim, Arista’s Chairman and Chief Development Officer. “These products will address pent up demand for more bandwidth in cloud networks, allowing cloud service providers to build much more scalable networks.”

Driving High Speed for Demanding Applications

The new platforms, which are based on the Broadcom 12.8 Tbps Tomahawk 3 silicon, support 32 400G ports in a compact 1U chassis. In addition, each 400G port can be split into four 100G ports, which supports a total of 128 100G ports in a 1U chassis. Enhancements in Arista EOS traffic management and load balancing take advantage of on-chip improvements in buffering and routing resources. Key features of the new products include:

• 4X increase in bandwidth density compared to existing 100G 1U switches
• Optimized shared buffer to lower application latency for AI and storage workloads
• Elephant Flow Detector for advanced traffic management
• Traffic awareness with Dynamic Load Balancing and Dynamic Group Multipath to improve performance in large cloud and HPC networks
• Increased routing capacity combined with 2X IO increase for hyperscale leaf-spine
• Low power optimized with uncompromised performance at8 Tbps
• Consistent EOS support including cloud-based automation, analytics and availability
• Choice of OSFP and QSFP-DD optics supporting 50G/100G/200G and 400G speeds

Moving network tiers to 400G with high density 100G compute maximizes the performance of next-generation applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and server-less compute through greater network speeds and by eliminating oversubscription between leaf and spine tiers.

“The release of Arista’s 7060X4 Series based on our Tomahawk 3 switch silicon will help accelerate cloud adoption of scale-out 400GbE networks,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. “The combined solution addresses the need for substantially higher network performance and power efficiency for the new wave of cloud workloads.”

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