Broadcom ships Ethernet switch Tomahawk Ultra for HPC and AI scale-up

Broadcom has announced the shipment of its Ethernet switch — the Tomahawk Ultra. Engineered to transform the Ethernet switch for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads, Tomahawk Ultra delivers industry-leading ultra-low latency, massive throughput, and lossless networking, the company said in a media release.

“Tomahawk Ultra is a testament to innovation, involving a multi-year effort by hundreds of engineers who reimagined every aspect of the Ethernet switch,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s Core Switching Group. “This highlights Broadcom’s commitment to invest in advancing Ethernet for high-performance networking and AI scale-up.”

Tomahawk Ultra is optimized for the tightly coupled, low-latency communication patterns found in both high-performance computing systems and AI clusters. With ultra-low latency switching and adaptable optimized Ethernet headers, it provides predictable, high-efficiency performance for large-scale simulations, scientific computing and synchronized AI model training and inference.

When deployed with Scale-Up Ethernet (SUE specification available to the public here), Tomahawk Ultra enables sub-400ns XPU-to-XPU communication latency, including the switch transit time — setting a new benchmark for tightly synchronized AI compute at scale, the media release said.

By reducing Ethernet header overhead from 46 bytes to just 10 bytes, while maintaining full Ethernet compliance, Tomahawk Ultra dramatically improves network efficiency. This optimized header is adaptable per application, offering both flexibility and performance gains across diverse HPC and AI workloads, Broadcom said. 

“Networking needs within an XPU node are as critical as those between nodes. With 51.2 Tbps Ethernet switching, 250-ns latency, credit-based flow control, and configurable optimized header, the Tomahawk Ultra is a perfect solution for building high-bandwidth, high-reliability, high-efficiency, and low-latency lossless systems ready for scale-up AI and HPC applications,” said Michael KT Lee, Senior Vice President, Research and Development Center, Accton.

“Low latency is essential to unleashing the full potential of AI — from reducing training times to powering real-time inference,” said Forrest Norrod, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD. “By combining Broadcom’s new Tomahawk Ultra switch with AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC™ processors, we’re enabling high-performance, standards-based Ethernet solutions for AI infrastructure. Together, we’re advancing an open ecosystem that brings our vision of AI everywhere, for everyone, closer to reality.”

“Arista appreciates the combination of ultra-low latency and scale-up Ethernet innovations of Tomahawk Ultra for AI networking,” said Simon Capper, Principal Engineer for AI networking, Arista Networks. “Once again Broadcom is setting the pace in the AI and the switch industry.”