NVIDIA ConnectX-8 is a high-performance SmartNIC (network interface card) designed for cutting-edge data center networking, supporting speeds up to 800Gb/s. It’s part of NVIDIA’s ConnectX series, which provides intelligent, accelerated networking for AI, cloud, HPC (high-performance computing), and enterprise workloads.

Key Features of ConnectX-8:

1. Speed and Connectivity: 

• Offers a single port of 800Gb/s or dual ports at lower configurations (e.g., 400Gb/s each), using Octal Small Form-Factor Pluggable (OSFP) connectors.

• Supports both InfiniBand (NDR800) and Ethernet, aligning with NVIDIA’s dual-stack networking strategy

2. Performance:

• Delivers sub-800 nanosecond latency, critical for real-time AI and HPC workloads.

• Capable of handling over 200-million messages per second, thanks to hardware accelerations.

3. SuperNIC Features:

• Marketed as a ‘SuperNIC’, it integrates with NVIDIA’s BlueField DPUs (data-processing units) for advanced offloading.

• Supports RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE v2) and GPUDirect, enabling direct data transfers to NVIDIA GPUs, a boon for AI training clusters.

4. PCIe Requirements:

• Requires PCIe 6.0 x16 for full 800Gb/s bandwidth, though it’s backward compatible with PCIe 5.0 (likely needing dual x16 links or reduced performance).

Applications:

• AI Workloads: Accelerates GPU clusters for training and inference, especially in hyperscale environments.

• HPC: Supports scientific simulations requiring extreme bandwidth and low latency.

• Cloud and Storage: Boosts performance in distributed storage (e.g., NVMe-oF) and multi-tenant clouds with secure isolation.