Keysight Technologies introduced the AresONE 1600GE, a purpose-built 1.6T Ethernet AI workload emulation platform designed to validate next-generation AI fabrics operating over emerging 224G SerDes electrical lanes. The platform enables chipmakers, network equipment vendors, hyperscalers, and AI data center operators to emulate large-scale AI compute clusters and verify the behavior of AI fabrics before and after deployment. The system integrates physical-layer validation, AI workload emulation, and traffic and protocol testing into a single rack-mount platform.
AI infrastructure is rapidly shifting toward higher data rates and larger switch radix as operators deploy scale-up and scale-out GPU clusters. Network architectures increasingly rely on 800GE and 1600GE fan-out configurations to improve fabric efficiency and reduce the number of network tiers. These designs introduce new validation challenges, including signal integrity across 224G lanes, congestion behavior caused by microbursts, and accurate modeling of distributed AI communications such as collective operations. Keysight designed the AresONE 1600GE to address these challenges by combining a high-density 1.6T hardware architecture with its AI Data Center Builder (KAI DC Builder) software.
The KAI DC Builder software emulates real-world AI workloads, including multiple RoCEv2 connections and a wide range of collective communication patterns. Engineers can use the platform to measure fabric performance metrics under conditions that resemble production AI clusters, helping identify congestion, load balancing issues, and performance bottlenecks that affect AI training and inference workloads.
• AI data center validation at scale: Emulates GPU clusters and AI compute nodes to test GPUs, AI NICs, and accelerators before and after deployment while measuring the network’s impact on job completion time and training performance.
• High-density OSFP 1600 architecture: Provides four OSFP 1600 ports supporting flexible configurations of 1 × 1600GE, 2 × 800GE, 4 × 400GE, or 8 × 200GE over 224G SerDes lanes for link bring-up and large-scale traffic validation.
• Full-stack testing capabilities: Combines optical and electrical link validation, FEC and physical coding behavior, and Layer 2/3 protocol testing to correlate signal integrity with application-level performance.
• Scalable system design: Uses high-performance processing and memory to support automated testing, repeatable validation workflows, and integration into both lab and production environments.
• Integration with IxNetwork: Enables high-scale Layer 2/3 protocol and traffic emulation at lane speed, allowing engineers to detect issues earlier in the development cycle.
Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst at 650 Group, said: “The market is rapidly shifting from foundational training to inference and agentic models. The AI interconnect market (scale-up, scale-out, scale-across, and front-end) networks will approach $200B by 2030 led by record growth in 800G and 1.6T Ethernet. The move to 1.6T will be the largest and fastest cycle ever in the industry. Keysight’s additional AI validation software features along with AresONE 1600GE hardware will help customers scale in this new market opportunity.”
🌐 Analysis
Keysight is expanding its role in the AI infrastructure ecosystem by focusing on the validation and testing layer as hyperscalers transition from 800G to 1.6T Ethernet fabrics. The shift to 224G SerDes lanes, higher switch radix, and large-scale RoCE fabrics increases the complexity of validating GPU cluster networking, making workload-aware testing platforms increasingly important. Vendors across the ecosystem — including switch silicon providers, NIC vendors, and optical module manufacturers — are preparing for this transition to 1.6T and beyond.
