In its latest Data Center Switch Long-Range Forecast Report, Crehan Research predicts that a steep ramp of Ethernet switch deployments for scale-up in AI rack-systems, when added to the existing scale-out and scale-across Ethernet hypergrowth, will push total sales to surpass $250 billion over the next five years. Furthermore, Crehan predicts that the ramp in scale-up will have an even more profound impact on total market bandwidth, driving a 15-fold increase in the next five years (see accompanying chart).
“The bandwidth required for scale-up Ethernet in AI racks is about an order of magnitude greater than that required for scale-out, and this difference is likely to increase,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “We are projecting a 200-fold increase in scale-up Ethernet switching bandwidth alone.”
In line with the expected exponential growth in scale-up Ethernet switching, on top of rapidly expanding scale-out and scale-across deployments, Crehan’s report projects a rapid ramp in 1.6T Ethernet switch ports, starting later this year. “Fueled by generative AI network build-outs, data center 800GbE switch ports have seen the fastest ramp in history, and our latest forecast projects an even faster ramp for the upcoming 1.6T generation,” Crehan said.
