Marvell Extends Connectivity Leadership With Industry's First 1.6T PAM4 DSP for Active Electrical Cables
New Alaska® A 1.6T PAM4 DSP for copper interconnects is built on Marvell industry-leading 5nm PAM4 technology.
Addresses the growing need for 200G/lane I/O to handle AI accelerator and GPU bandwidth demands.
Enables 1.6T short-reach copper connectivity within accelerated compute racks.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – June 27, 2024 – Marvell Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRVL), a leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today introduced the Marvell® Alaska® A 1.6T PAM4 DSP for active electrical cables (AECs), the industry's first 1.6 Tbps AEC DSP to address emerging 200G/lane-based accelerated infrastructure architectures. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications are driving greater connectivity bandwidth requirements between AI accelerators, server to top-of-rack links and switch-to-switch interconnects within data center racks. The latest addition to the Alaska A family is built on 5nm process and leverages industry-leading Marvell PAM4 DSP technology to enable short-reach copper interconnect solutions that meet the growing bandwidth requirements of accelerated infrastructure.
According to 650 Group, the AEC silicon market is expected to grow at 64% per year to reach $1 billion by 2028 with DSPs powering AECs to reach nearly 40 million units per year1. “AI is driving the need for short-reach copper connectivity at 1.6T,” said Alan Weckel, 650 co-founder. “Marvell leadership is clear with the introduction of its Alaska 1.6T AEC DSP, which continues the company’s history of delivering best-in-class PAM DSPs that enable cable vendors to offer interconnect solutions optimized for the different cloud AI architectures.”
Copper PAM4 DSP Technology for Accelerated Infrastructure
The short-reach copper connections between AI accelerators, server to top-of-rack links and switch-to-switch interconnects within a rack have traditionally been addressed by direct attached cable (DAC). As speeds increase to 200G/lane, the distance over which passive DACs can be used declines significantly. AECs use PAM4 DSPs to retime the signal to extend the reach of copper interconnects and enable thinner cables within high-density data center racks.
AECs are increasingly being used in a wide variety of applications, including as part of the AI server compute fabric. Historically, most AI server designs used copper trace connections on printed circuit boards to connect accelerators to one another. Now, to address larger AI workloads, an increasing number of accelerators per AI server are needed, resulting in the distribution of accelerators across multiple boards within the rack that are connected using copper cables. As the speed of the accelerator-to-accelerator interconnects transitions to 200G/lane signaling, AECs will play a crucial role in enabling this connectivity.
The new Alaska A device leverages over a decade of Marvell PAM4 leadership. The Alaska A 1.6T DSP features eight 200 Gbps SerDes lanes to the host device and eight 200 Gbps SerDes lanes to the copper cable. The industry-leading equalization engine built into the Alaska A 1.6T DSP enables cable reaches of greater than three meters, addressing the reach requirements for inside-the-rack copper connections. The Alaska A 1.6T DSP is designed for next-generation accelerated infrastructure with 200 Gbps I/O interfaces on AI accelerators, GPUs, NICs and switches.
Key features of the Alaska A 1.6T AEC DSP include:
- Proven DSP-based 200G PAM4 SerDes
- Advanced digital equalizer with Feed Forward (FFE), Decision Feedback (DFE) and Maximum Likelihood Sequence Detection (MLSD)
- Greater than 3-meter reach at 200G/lane
- 200 Gbps per lane electrical line-side interface
- Optimized for QSFP-DD and OSFP form factors
- Retiming and gearboxing support
- Cable reference design for 1.6T AECs
- SDK support for advanced telemetry and diagnostics
“The next wave of AI clusters will need 200 Gbps signaling to handle the bandwidth requirements of generative AI and large language models,” said Venu Balasubramonian, vice president of product marketing, Connectivity Business Unit, at Marvell. “The newest addition to our Alaska A product line extends our leadership in delivering PAM4 DSP technology for short-reach copper connectivity for cloud AI clusters.”
Industry-Leading Cable Manufacturer Support
“Our portfolio of interconnect solutions is designed to meet critical performance, efficiency and reliability requirements for next-generation infrastructure architectures. With the Marvell Alaska A 1.6T PAM4 AEC DSP we can offer an advanced AEC copper interconnect solution for 200G/lane connectivity that brings price-performance and power consumption advantages for high-density AI clusters and data-center infrastructure,” said Brian Kirk, group CTO, High Speed Products, at Amphenol Communications Solutions.
“Molex’s AEC portfolio offers a complete solution for our customers’ cloud interconnect architectures. As speeds continue to rise driven by AI and ML, copper cable reach becomes very challenging for next-generation AI platforms. The Marvell Alaska A 1.6T AEC DSP enables us to deliver AEC solutions to meet the copper cable reach requirements at 200G/lane,” said Jairo Guerrero, vice president and general manager, Copper Solutions, at Molex.
“200G/lane will be the speed of choice for next generation AI data centers, with copper cables playing a critical role for short reach intra-rack connectivity. The combination of the Marvell Alaska A 1.6T PAM4 AEC DSP with TE's advanced cabling solutions will deliver the bandwidth needed for next-generation, intra-rack AI copper interconnects,” said Vishwas Rao, vice president of product management at TE Connectivity.
製品の供給について
Leading cable partners will sample Alaska A 1.6T PAM4 DSP-based active electrical cables in August.
マーベルについて
世界をつなぐデータインフラ技術をお届けするために、お客様とのパートナーシップという最も強力な基盤の上にソリューションを構築しています。25年以上にわたって世界的な大手テクノロジー企業に信頼されてきた当社は、顧客の現在のニーズ、将来の展望に合わせて設計したセミコンダクターソリューションにより、世界中のデータを動かし、保存し、処理し、さらに保護しています。深い協働と透明性を通じて、私たちは明日のエンタープライズ、クラウド、自動車およびキャリアアーキテクチャの変革を究極的により良い方向へと変えていきます。
Footnote 1: 650 Group: AEC Quarterly Market and Long-Term Forecast Report, June 2024.
###
Marvell® と M® ロゴは、マーベル・テクノロジー・グループ・リミテッド及びその関連会社の登録商標です。 マーベルの商標の詳細なリストについては、www.marvell.com をご参照ください。 これ以外の名前やブランド名についてはそれぞれ各社の所有物としてその権利を主張される場合があります。
このプレスリリースには、リスクや不確実性のある連邦証券法の意味における将来の見通しに関する記述が含まれています。 将来の見通しに関する記述には、将来の出来事、結果、業績を予測、予想、示唆、暗示する記述が含まれますが、これらに限定されるものではありません。 実際の出来事または結果は、本プレスリリースで意図されたものとは大きく異なる可能性があります。 将来の見通しに関する記述は予測に過ぎず、フォーム10-K年次報告書、フォーム10-Q四半期報告書、および当社がSECに随時提出するその他の文書の「リスク要因」セクションに記載されているものを含め、予測困難なリスク、不確実性、および仮定の影響を受けます。将来見通しに関する記述には、作成日の時点の情報のみが記載されています。 読者は、将来の見通しに関する記述に過度に依存しないよう注意してください。また、いかなる個人も、新たな情報、将来の出来事、その他の結果にかかわらず、そのような将来の見通しに関する記述を更新または修正する義務を負うものではありません。
詳細については、以下の担当者にお問い合わせください。
マイケル・カネロス
pr@marvell.com
