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AMD Launches Industry’s First Ultra Ethernet-Compliant NIC, Oracle First to Deploy

Targeting high-bandwidth AI workloads, AMD has introduced the Pensando Pollara 400GbE Network Interface Card (NIC)—the first to comply with the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) 1.0 specification.

Unveiled at the recent Advancing AI event, the Pollara NIC was somewhat overshadowed by AMD’s new Instinct MI350 GPUs and the announcement of the forthcoming MI400X, expected in 2025. Still, Pollara marks a significant milestone in networking for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), offering UEC 1.0 compliance and 400 Gb/s of throughput optimized for large-scale GPU deployments.

Oracle will be the first cloud provider to deploy Pollara, staking its claim in next-gen AI infrastructure despite its current ~3% market share—well behind AWS and Microsoft.

Originally announced in 2024, Pollara is now officially shipping. It leverages programmable hardware with support for Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), hardware-based congestion control, and intelligent routing for GPU-to-GPU communication—akin to Nvidia’s NVLink c2c. The NIC also supports RoCEv2 and can interoperate with other NICs in mixed environments.

In a forward-looking move, AMD also announced its next-gen Vulcano NIC, which doubles bandwidth to 800 Gb/s and maintains full UEC 1.0 compliance. Vulcano supports PCIe and dual interfaces for direct CPU and GPU connectivity, making it ideal for hyperscale AI clusters.

Both NICs integrate with Helios, AMD’s custom AI rack design. In Helios, every GPU connects over a low-latency UA link tunneled through standard Ethernet, enabling a rack-level architecture that mirrors Nvidia’s NVL-72, where 72 GPUs function as a unified processor.

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium, founded in 2023 under the Linux Foundation, includes industry giants such as AMD, Intel, Broadcom, Cisco, Arista, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, and HPE. Its UEC 1.0 spec aims to standardize Ethernet-based interconnects for accelerators and data center fabrics—critical infrastructure for scaling AI.

With Pollara now in play and Vulcano on the horizon, AMD is positioning itself as a leader in next-gen AI networking—pushing the boundaries of open, scalable Ethernet solutions.

Original Article Sited: https://www.networkworld.com/article/4011095/amd-rolls-out-first-ultra-ethernet-compliant-nic.html

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