Nvidia’s new product line
Rumors confirmed
I have introduced Nvidia’s ambition to enter the communications switch market in my post of “Nvidia’s new business set to grow its share price“. At the 2025 GTC conference, Huang Renxun announced Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics CPO switches in his keynote speech. For what is silicon photonics CPO, please refer to my post of “What are silicon photonics? Why it’s important? and current progress“
Now it is proved that the market rumors are not groundless. This article intends to introduce Spectrum-X, Nvidia’s new product line.
Product Introduction
Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics CPO switches, these two products support 144×800G (to be launched in the second half of 2025) and 512×800G (to be launched in the second half of 2026) configurations, aiming to meet the urgent needs of AI supercomputing for high bandwidth and low power consumption.
Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet switch
Spectrum-X Photonics: Ethernet switch, providing up to 512 800Gb/s ports or 2,048 200Gb/s ports, with a total throughput of up to 400Tbps.
Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand switch
Quantum-X Photonics: InfiniBand switch, providing 144 800Gb/s ports based on 200Gb/s SerDes, with a total throughput of 115.2Tbps.
Field of competition
Nvidia released Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonic switches, and its main market currently targeted is back-end communication, that is, the exchange of massive data in data centers, rather than front-end communication.
Home customer communication
There are many manufacturers involved in front-end communication, and the entry threshold is relatively low. The first is the communication devices that are generally used at home, such as Taiwan’s D-Link, Accton, or China’s TP-Link. TP-Link is the world’s largest supplier, with a market share of more than 2/3.
Corporate network communication
The second type is to target the general enterprise environment and data transmission in the work scene. The main players in this part are HPE, Huawei, IBM, Arista and Cisco. A large part of their business focuses on customers in general companies, offices, and institutions.
Back-end communication
Back-end communication targets cloud centers, server rooms, AI data centers, telecommunications companies, etc. The data transmission needs of this type of customers are very large, facing user connections and data transmission from all over the world, which is far beyond the reach of enterprise-level customer networks.
Nvidia’s release of Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonic switch business targets this small number of super-large customers.
Nvidia, competing with Arista and Cisco
Nvidia is eating into Arista and Cisco’s market
Nvidia launched its Spectrum-X Ethernet switch in mid-2023. In its Q1 2025 earnings call, Nvidia said it had added Alphabet’s Google Cloud and Meta to its Spectrum-X customer list.
Arista, in particular, is the biggest competitor Nvidia wants to beat.
Arista
Despite the news from Nvidia, it doesn’t necessarily spell doom for Nvidia. Microsoft Azure is already a Spectrum-X customer, and Arista’s revenue growth hasn’t slowed. This suggests that revenue from Meta could remain strong. Still, Nvidia is undoubtedly a growing competitive threat to Arista. This competition could reduce margins and limit growth prospects.
However, Nvidia’s move into Ethernet is a huge validation of Nvidia’s technology. Nvidia has traditionally focused on another networking technology called InfiniBand. In recent years, there has been much debate over whether InfiniBand or Ethernet will become the preferred network solution for AI data centers. The launch and success of Nvidia’s Spectrum-X further confirms the view that the balance of power is tilting towards Ethernet. From a macro perspective, this is good for Arista. Despite Nvidia’s entry, the company’s growth will still benefit as the Ethernet market expands. It is worth noting that Citi analysts generally agree with this view.
Arista is not without powerful allies. The company uses Broadcom’s Tomahawk chips in its switches. Broadcom has just started shipping the Tomahawk 6 chip. It has twice the bandwidth of any Ethernet switch chip currently on the market, which puts Arista in a favorable position.
For Arista, please refer to my post of “How Arista, the nemesis of Cisco’s monopoly, makes money?“
Cisco
Cisco will combine Nvidia’s Spectrum-X equipment with Cisco OS system software, which is equivalent to entering Nvidia’s supply chain and establishing a business partner relationship with Nvidia that is both a friend and an enemy.
Please see my post of “Cisco, ex-biggest company, the representative of dot-com bubble” for Cisco.
Related articles
- “A must-read for Nvidia investors＂The Thinking Machine＂“
- “AI inference chips vs. training chips“
- “Spectrum-X and Quantum-X switches, Nvidia’s new territory“
- “Cisco, ex-biggest company, the representative of dot-com bubble“
- “What are silicon photonics? Why it’s important? and current progress“
- “How Arista, the nemesis of Cisco’s monopoly, makes money?“
- “Nvidia’s new business set to grow its share price“
- “How does nVidia make money, Nvidia is changing the gaming rules“
- “The reasons for Nvidia’s monopoly and the challenges it faces“
- “Why nVidia failed to acquire ARM?“
- “Revisiting Nvidia: The Absolute Leader in Artificial Intelligence, Data Center, and Graphics“
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