NVIDIA and Cisco announced plans for Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a new high-density 400Gb/s-per-lane optical module designed to equip the hardware ecosystem for the next generation of AI factories using pluggable transceivers.
As AI models grow and inference demand expands, AI factories must connect more computing systems while managing network complexity, power and costs. Moving more data per watt and per switch helps operators make better use of their infrastructure investments.
Scaling AI factories requires more bandwidth per connection and more connections per switch. When a switch reaches its capacity, further network expansion can require additional switch layers and optical links, increasing latency, power consumption and costs.
USFP is designed to enable AI factory builders to scale from 200 Gb/s per lane to 400Gb/s-per-lane Ethernet AI fabrics, while extending a deployment model proven at scale across multiple generations of data center networks. With USFP, customers can embrace next-generation optical technology and meet the performance demand of AI workloads without overhauling their data center infrastructure.
The first planned USFP-based transceivers will pack 16 full-duplex lanes in an octal small form factor (OSFP)-sized footprint supporting both switches and SuperNICs, with the ability to expand to 32 and more lanes in the future. By doubling both the lane count and bandwidth per lane, USFP enables AI fabrics to connect more 1.6Tb/s endpoints without adding network tiers. Customers will be able to achieve 12.8Tb/s of overall capacity with USFP.
Comparable with an OSFP-sized module, it delivers 4x the bandwidth and front-panel bandwidth density, with approximately 1.3x the power efficiency, versus 200Gb/s-per-lane pluggable modules. This means AI builders can increase their compute scale within the same network footprint, while decreasing networking’s share of the overall AI factory power budget.
“Building the world’s largest AI factories starts with rethinking the smallest of connections,” said Gilad Shainer, senior vice president at NVIDIA. “With USFP, NVIDIA and Cisco are building an ecosystem to reinvent pluggable optics — connecting more computing with greater efficiency to power the next generation of AI factories.”
“AI builders need an interconnect architecture that can scale performance without locking them into a more complex operating model,” said Bill Gartner, senior vice president and general manager of optical systems and optics at Cisco. “Cisco and NVIDIA recognized that scaling pluggable optics to 400Gb/s per lane would require more than another incremental extension of today’s module designs. Through our collaboration, USFP is designed to deliver a new level of bandwidth density while preserving the serviceability, deployment flexibility and operational simplicity of pluggable optics. By taking a full-stack approach — from silicon and systems to optics and the network operating system — we can optimize every layer to deliver the performance and scale the next generation of AI networks will require.”
