Cisco’s prolific inventor JP Vasseur said Colette Kress, the AI computing giant’s CFO, said the company’s Spectrum-X series of data center Ethernet networking products “will be used in dozens of applications within a year.” He joins Nvidia shortly after saying, “We are on track to launch a billion dollar product line.” . ”
Nvidia has hired a 25-year engineering veteran at Cisco Systems, once hailed as the switching giant’s most prolific inventor, to lead the development of the AI computing giant’s AI and networking architecture.
JP Vasseur, a recently retired Cisco fellow who most recently served as vice president of engineering for machine learning and AI for networks, announced in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday that he is now the senior distinguished engineer and chief architect for AI and networking. announced that he has joined Nvidia this month.
(Related: Analysis: How Nvidia surpassed Intel in annual revenue and took the AI crown)
“With over 32 years of experience in the networking space, including the past 13 years focused on AI and networking products, I am encouraged by the tremendous opportunity to drive innovation in these areas,” he said in a LinkedIn post. said.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment. Mr. Vasseur and Cisco did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia drives Ethernet sales into billions of dollars
Vasseur’s announcement comes as Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said the company’s Spectrum-X series of data center Ethernet networking products is “on track to launch a multi-billion dollar product line within a year.” This took place a little over a month after.
Kress made this comment in late August during NVIDIA’s second-quarter earnings call, noting that the company’s Ethernet for AI revenue, which includes its Spectrum-X products, doubled sequentially from the previous quarter.
“Spectrum-X has received broad market support from OEM and ODM partners, and is currently being used by (cloud service providers), GPU cloud providers, and (Elon Musk’s) X. It is being adopted by companies including A.I.,” she said.
Kress claimed that Spectrum-X “enhances Ethernet for AI processing, delivering 1.6x the performance of traditional Ethernet,” and that NVIDIA is “developing new chips along with new chips to support computing scaling demands.” We plan to launch new Spectrum-X products every year.” Clusters from tens of thousands of GPUs today to millions of GPUs in the near future will be possible. ”
Nvidia’s decision to hire a Cisco engineering veteran with experience at the intersection of AI and networking should be another sign that the AI computing giant is making networking a key priority, according to Solutions. the provider’s chief engineer told CRN.
“They want to focus on networking in a big way, so it’s no wonder this guy came to them,” said the engineer, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company. .
Nvidia began making a big push into networking in 2019 when it acquired high-speed interconnect vendor Mellanox Technologies for $7 billion. Since then, Mellanox’s technology has played a key role in Nvidia’s strategy to become a “data center-scale computing company.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once said:
While the company sells a wide range of networking products, from Ethernet and InfiniBand switches to data processing units and SmartNICs, Nvidia is expanding these products into AI servers and data servers designed in-house and sold to a variety of customers. It is used as an important component of the center. From enterprises to cloud service providers.
Nvidia recently joined the Ultra Ethernet Consortium alongside other technology giants to develop specifications for high-speed networking solutions, but the solution provider’s principal engineer believes Nvidia will ultimately expand its networking sales efforts even further. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if it started covering a wider area. data center market
“I think they’re counting on Mellanox networking and the fact that (its) BasePod and SuperPod (AI supercomputer clusters) are not only going to be deployed, but they’re going to start making them part of enterprise networks that are starting to go down. “I think this Ultra Ethernet consortium type of approach,” he said.
Vasseur: Famous Cisco Engineer and Top Inventor
Mr. Vasseur holds PhD and master’s degrees in computer systems networking and telecommunications from Télécom Paris, France, and Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, respectively, and spent the past 25 years at Cisco, working on advanced technology development. He was a noted engineer and top inventor. Priority efforts.
Cisco’s 2019 blog post called Vasseur the company’s “top inventor,” with 483 patents issued to his name, and said he was “a big believer in innovation from machine learning and AI in enterprise security.” It covers major technology fields, from the Internet of Things to the Internet.
“He is one of only 19 Cisco Fellows out of 30,000 engineers and is constantly pushing the boundaries of technology,” Cisco said in a blog post.
In his most recent role as Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Engineering for Networking, Mr. Vasseur is responsible for “large-scale language models and generative AI use case specifications, system architecture design, prompt engineering, model tuning, and advanced techniques.” He said he led the development. Knowledge DB and (Search Enhancement Generation),” according to his LinkedIn profile.
Previously, he held engineering roles in various focus areas including predictive networking, IoT, and advanced threat detection.
In announcing his departure from Cisco two weeks ago, Vasseur said, “One of the most exciting parts of my journey so far has been contributing to the birth and explosive growth of a new industry, the Internet.” “And Cisco has made a significant contribution to that.”
Vasseur, who currently works at Nvidia, sees his work at the AI computing giant as another transformative journey.
“Jensen Huang’s vision for Nvidia to build new areas of accelerated computing and industry using the AI Factory is very inspiring, and I’m excited to join this journey and his incredibly talented team. ” he wrote on LinkedIn.
