Broadcom on Tuesday boasted that it has set a new benchmark for performance in AI scale-out networking with Thor Ultra, the industry's first 800G AI ethernet network interface card. But Broadcom stock slid on the stock market today.
Thor Ultra is designed for large-scale artificial intelligence data centers with over 100,000 XPUs. XPUs are specialized, high-performance processing units, such as AI accelerators. Thor Ultra supports data speeds of 800 gigabits per second.
Also, Thor Ultra is fully compliant with specifications of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, an industry group crafting standards for AI and high-performance computing networks.
"Thor Ultra is a breakthrough in AI networking," Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Core Switching Group, said in a news release. "By introducing the first 800G NIC (network interface card) with full UEC feature compliance and Advanced RDMA (remote direct memory access) capabilities, we deliver the performance, scalability, and openness required for tomorrow's scale-out AI clusters — without the lock-in and with true interoperability."
Broadcom competes primarily with Nvidia in data center networking.
Thor Ultra extends Broadcom's end-to-end ethernet AI networking platform, complementing the Tomahawk and Jericho switch families.
Last week, Broadcom announced the industry's first 102.4 terabits-per-second co-packaged optics (CPO) product called Tomahawk 6 – Davisson. It is targeted at scale-up and scale-out AI data center deployments. Davisson is Broadcom's third-generation CPO solution after Humboldt and Bailly.
Broadcom Stock Slips After Big Jump
On the stock market today, Broadcom stock fell 3.5% to close at 344.13.
On Monday, Broadcom stock surged 9.9% to close at 356.70 after it announced a deal to provide 10 gigawatts of AI accelerators to ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
In other news Tuesday, Broadcom announced the industry's first Wi-Fi 8 silicon solutions for the broadband wireless edge. It is offering Wi-Fi 8 products for residential gateways, enterprise access points, and smart mobile clients, such as smartphones and laptops.
"Wi-Fi 8 represents a fundamental shift in how we approach wireless broadband," Mark Gonikberg, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Wireless Communications and Connectivity Division, said in a news release. "The transition to the 'AI era' demands networks that are fast, smart, adaptive, and deeply reliable."
In addition to making its own products, Broadcom will license its Wi-Fi 8 intellectual property to other firms, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said.
Broadcom stock is on three IBD lists: Big Cap 20, Leaderboard and Tech Leaders.
Follow Patrick Seitz on X at @IBD_PSeitz for more stories on consumer technology, software and semiconductor stocks.
