Ethernet Alliance is a global consortium of member organizations dedicated to the advancement of Ethernet technologies. As the voice of Ethernet, Ethernet Alliance plays a vital role in facilitating its commercialization, bridging the gap between technology standards and end users.At this year's OFC, both the Ethernet Alliance and the Optical Interconnect Forum (OIF) organized joint exhibition, and the Ethernet Alliance once again updated their popular Ethernet roadmap.
The Ethernet Alliance is also a regular exhibitor to OFC and I have been invited to interview them at previous shows. But one thing they seem to have in common is that their English is not very easy for me to understand, either because of the speed of speech, or because there are a lot of technical backgrounds that I am not familiar with. When I got the invitation again, I made up my mind to ask them more about the latest roadmap, but the machine-gun-like introduction of the enthusiastic Ethernet Alliance Chair, Mr. Peter Jones, a distinguished engineer at Cisco, immediately revealed my poor English hearing. Either way, in order to get the job done, I tried to capture what I could understand in his words and try to find new highlights of the Ethernet Alliance on the OFC show floor.
With Peter Jones （right）on OFC2025
Industry leaders participating in this year's Ethernet Alliance OFC interoperabitilty demo include AMD; Amphenol ; Anritsu ; Arista; Cisco; EXFO; Formerica Optoelectronics; Hyper Photonix; Juniper; Keysight; Spirent Communications, Inc.; Synopsys; TE Connectivity; Teledyne LeCroy; VeEX Corporation and Wilder Technologies. There are chip companies, connector companies, test instrument and product companies, network switch companies, optical module companies. There are many American companies, as well as Chinese companies (Hyper Photonix and Formerica), Canadian companies (EXFO and Wilder), and Japanese companies (Anritsu). At the Ethernet Alliance's booth 5173, this year they highlighted the evolution of Ethernet in terms of speed, efficiency, and performance. Rates range from 10G to 800G Ethernet, with management aspects including Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS), Auto-Negotiated Link Training (ANLT), and congestion control and SmartNIC load balancing. Product innovations include 224 Gbps electrical signals, linear pluggable optics (LPO), liquid cooling for efficient networks, and a variety of interconnect products, including OSFP, QSFP-DD, QSFP, ZR, OpenZR, and SFP. They will delve into the evolving role of Ethernet in AI, cloud computing, hyperscale data centers, and high-speed networks, as well as the impact of higher link speeds and the challenges of ensuring interoperability in an increasingly complex environment, according to the Ethernet Alliance's press release.
According to Peter, for optical communication companies, the most notable thing about the Ethernet Alliance's interoperability test is that they have organized more than four optical transceiver manufacturers to test LPO modules, and he told the editor that LPO technology is fully prepared and can be commercialized on a large scale. From the on-site display, it can be seen that the three manufacturers that provide switches, Arista, Cisco and Juniper, have LPO tests, and the modules are mainly provided by Hyper Photonix, and Taiwan's Formerica also has 800G DR8 LPO modules to participate.
I was also invited to interview Ethernet Alliance when thet released its roadmap last time. This roadmap can be seen in the offices of many optical communications companies today. What's new in the 2025 version of the 10th Anniversary Ethernet Roadmap? As a roadmap to guide the development of the whole industry, the biggest feature of the new version is that it accommodates new concepts and applications such as AI/ML, time-sensitive networking, and 3.2T.
In terms of AI/ML, the roadmap mentions the Ultra-Ethernet Consortium UEC, an open and interoperable high-performance architecture for AI scale-out applications, and UALink, a Ultra-accelerator link for scale-up applications. At last year's Ethernet Alliance Technology Exploration Forum (TEF), experts from the Ethernet Alliance discussed the challenges posed by AI applications. Commenting on the comparison between NVIDIA's Infiniband standard and Ethernet, Peter told the editor that they think they have different application areas and that the two standards will coexist for some time. Another focus on AI on the new roadmap is energy consumption. The roadmap states that by 2026, the AI industry will consume 10 times more electricity than in 2023. New technologies such as PHY technologies, copper and optical interconnection technologies, and intelligent load sensing will help the AI industry reduce energy consumption.
Automotive Ethernet is also a highlight of the roadmap and a topic of interest to the editor. According to the roadmap, the automotive industry is embracing Ethernet as the next generation of in-vehicle connectivity standards. SPE has become a key technology to support ADAS, autonomous driving, and other applications. The evolution to the Zonal architecture reduced the weight and complexity of the car. Time-sensitive network TSN can better provide safety for autonomous driving. The editor spoke to Peter about the sight of driverless taxis on the streets of San Francisco, and Peter said that Ethernet will definitely find greater adoption in the automotive industry.
In this roadmap, 3.2Tbps is the highest speed, although 1.6T and 3.2T are still connected by dotted wires, but there are many technical introductions to the 3.2T implementation in the roadmap, including CPO, coherent, etc. I noticed that the roadmap of 400G single channel is already a reality, and the next technology is 800G single channel or even higher.
Many times I can't catch Peter Jones talking, but one thing I do know is that what he repeatedly said is that the work of the Ethernet Alliance right now is to narrow the focus in one direction, not in every direction. I would like to use his words as a summary of this article:
"Ethernet has always been at the forefront of high-speed networks, providing the scalable, interoperable foundation needed for AI-driven workloads and next-generation connectivity."
You can download the new roadmap from Ethernet Alliance
