Dell'Oro Group: Shipments Of 800Gbps Ports Will Quadruple By 2024

According to a recent report released by Dell'Oro Group, the construction of AI infrastructure, also known as "back-end networks," is leading to budget cuts and project delays in general infrastructure, or "front-end networks." Despite these project delays, shipments of 800Gbps ports are expected to quadruple by 2024.

Sameh Boujelbene, Group Vice President at Dell'Oro, said: "Recent interviews with major cloud service providers (SPS) revealed that multiple projects were delayed or put on hold as the focus shifted to building AI infrastructure. Project delays and budget cuts have pushed back 800Gbps adoption timelines for some major cloud SPS by about a year. As a result, we have lowered our sales forecast for switches deployed in the front-end network compared to the July 2023 report."

"Despite project delays, 800Gbps port shipments are expected to quadruple in 2024, driven by expected adoption by major cloud service providers, particularly Amazon, and the availability of 51.2Tbps chips in the market." Both the back-end and front-end networks will be 800Gbps. While our traditional data center switch report focused on front-end Networks, we delved into back-end network deployment in our recently released advanced research report, "AI Networks for AI Workloads," Boujelbene added.

Other highlights from the Ethernet Switch five-year forecast report released in January 2024:

1. 1600Gbps is expected to start shipping in 2025/2026. By 2028, these high rates, combined with 800Gbps, are expected to account for nearly 40 percent of data center switch ports.

2. Linear drive optics, an alternative to co-packaged optics, will gain substantial attention during our forecast period.

3.SONiC adoption will accelerate, reaching 10-20% penetration among level 2 and 3 cloud SP and large enterprises by 2028.