NVIDIA Quantum-2 has been announced, an advanced end-to-end networking platform that offers better performance, expanded accessibility, and improved security needed by cloud providers and supercomputing centers. The NVIDIA Quantum-2 is a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.
NVIDIA Quantum-2 has been announced, an advanced end-to-end networking platform that offers better performance, expanded accessibility, and improved security needed by cloud providers and supercomputing centers. The NVIDIA Quantum-2 is a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.
NVIDIA Quantum-2 Switch
As supercomputing centers increase user access and global cloud service providers expand supercomputing services, workloads will demand additional features to support both environments. The NVIDIA Quantum-2 networking platform meets those demands with improved network speed and density.
BlueField-3 DPU – 2x 200Gb/s FHHL form factor
With 400Gbps, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand doubles the network speed and triples the number of network port densities. By increasing performance by 3x, data center fabric switches can be reduced by 6x, cutting data center power consumption and reducing the overall data center footprint.
NVIDIA Quantum-2’s multi-tenant performance isolation separates the activity of one tenant from disturbing others. It does this by utilizing an advanced telemetry-based congestion control system with cloud-native capabilities that ensure reliable throughput, regardless of spikes in users or workload demands.
AI applications performance will improve compared to previous generations with 32x more acceleration engines via the NVIDIA Quantum-2 SHARPv3 In-Network Computing technology. Advanced InfiniBand fabric management for data centers, including predictive maintenance, is enabled with the NVIDIA UFM Cyber-AI platform.
At the heart of the Quantum-2 platform is the new InfiniBand switch, which has 57 billion transistors on 7-nanometer silicon. With more than 5x the switching capability over the previous generation Quantum-1, the new Quantum-2 platform features 64 ports at 400Gbps or 128 ports at 200Gbps. The NVIDIA Quantum-2 platform will be available in configurations of up to 2,048 ports.
With the combined networking speed, switching capability, and scalability, the Quantum-2 platform is well-suited for the next-generation HPC system.
The NVIDIA Quantum-2 switch is available from leading infrastructure and system vendors such as Atos, DataDirect Networks (DDN), Dell Technologies, Excelero, GIGABYTE, HPE, IBM, Inspur, Lenovo, Penguin Computing, QCT, Supermicro, VAST Data, and WekaIO.
ConnectX-7
The ConnectX-7 smart host channel adapter (HCA) features the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand architecture, providing high networking performance. ConnectX-7 delivers ultra-low latency, 400Gb/s throughput, and innovative NVIDIA In-Network Computing acceleration engines. This allows it to provide additional acceleration to provide the scalability and feature-rich technology needed for supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and hyperscale cloud data centers.
NVIDIA ConnectX-7 Smart Host Channel Adapter (HCA)
BlueField-3 (DPU)
The NVIDIA BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU) is an exciting development. The 3rd-generation version is considered a data center infrastructure-on-a-chip technology that enables organizations to build software-defined, hardware-accelerated IT infrastructures from cloud to core data center to edge. With 400Gb/s Ethernet or NDR 400Gb/s InfiniBand network connectivity, BlueField-3 DPU offloads, accelerates, and isolates software-defined networking, storage, security, and management functions in ways that profoundly improve data center performance, efficiency, and security.
BlueField-3 DPUs transform traditional computing environments into secure and accelerated virtual private clouds, allowing organizations to run application workloads in secure, multi-tenant environments.
BlueField-3 DPU – 2x 200Gb/s FHHL form factor
Conclusion
Overall, the NVIDIA Quantum-2 platform is an exciting release by the company, and there are several aspects that make the new technology stand out, including:
- The BlueField data processing unit (DPU) provides a secure, accelerated infrastructure to allow offloading services critical to modern data centers. NVIDIA likens it to infrastructure-on-a-chip delivering security from edge to server, expanded storage for workloads, high-performance networking, and an SDK for creating software-defined infrastructure.
- The fixed-configuration switch technology can grow from 64 to 128 ports while the modular switches have a capacity of 2048 ports, 400Gbps non-blocking InfiniBand bandwidth.
- A robust management platform to enable monitoring from the edge to the data center to the cloud.
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