US-based Chelsio Communications has introduced its seventh-generation Ethernet-basedAI Interconnect Platform, aimed at supporting next-generation data centre, storage, and AI infrastructure.
The new platform includes SmartNICs, Storage Controllers, and data processing units (DPUs), and is built on Chelsio’s latest Unified Wire architecture.
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It delivers native 400Gb Ethernet capability alongside unified remote direct memory access (RDMA) support with internet wide area RDMA protocol (iWARP) and RDMA over converged ethernet version 2 (RoCEv2).
SmartNICs and Storage Controllers are available for purchase, while the DPUs are currently released for evaluation, with broader production scheduled for December 2026.
Chelsio states that the solution is designed for use in AI training and inference clusters, disaggregated storage, and high-performance networking setups.
All product components share a common hardware and software architecture intended to maintain software consistency and enable scalable, standards-based AI infrastructure.
The platform extends capabilities of its previous T5 and T6 families by targeting improvements in throughput, latency, and efficiency across a range of deployments.
Chelsio positions Ethernet as a scalable alternative to proprietary AI interconnects at high speeds.
The intent is to provide high-throughput, low-latency connectivity between graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters, storage, and network fabrics, largely by combining congestion management with programmable hardware offloads.
Furthermore, the platform supports a range of Ethernet speeds from 1Gb to 400Gb.
It features lossless Ethernet, congestion control, and GPU-optimised data paths, targeting workloads requiring high-throughput such as large-scale AI training, high performance computing, and storage acceleration.
Offload support includes protocols such as NVMe/TCP, iSCSI, RDMA, and TOE. Options for virtualisation, security (including QUIC and IPsec/TLS/kTLS), and various deployment form factors are also integrated.
Chelsio Communications CEO Kianoosh Naghshineh said: “Chelsio seventh-generation AI Interconnect Platform represents a milestone in Ethernet evolution, combining programmable flexibility with the proven performance our customers depend on.
“With T7, we are positioning Ethernet as a scalable, standards-based AI interconnect—delivering the performance required for large-scale AI training while preserving the flexibility and cost advantages of open networking.”
The platform includes multiple adapter options such as the S7250, S7450, and S71400 SmartNICs, as well as T72200 and T7450 Storage Controllers, with early access available for T7 DPU adapters.
All models offer protocol offloads for a range of cloud and AI-driven data centre workloads.
