Skip to content

Ethernet Evolution and Challenges in the world of AI - BRKNWT-2504#

Cisco Live US 2025 (San Diego) digest Program Core pick San Diego · 8–12 June 2025

Abstract

Kapil Mehta (Cisco)

  • Why: This is the lossless-fabric problem the PM works on daily — RDMA and elephant flows breaking Ethernet's assumptions in AI back-end networks — plus a read on where Ultra Ethernet Consortium standardization is actually heading.
  • What: Ethernet's evolution history, its current failure modes under AI switching workloads (RDMA, elephant packet flows), Cisco's solutions, and the innovations being standardized by the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (from abstract only).
  • How: Survey of the mechanisms being applied to congestion and losslessness at AI scale, positioned against UEC's standardization work items.
  • Where applicable: AI back-end networks generally; the problem framing is industry-wide, but the "solutions" portion will be Cisco-flavored.