Nokia, Keysight complete UET test for AI data centres

Author: Joe Peck

Finnish telecommunications company Nokia, in collaboration with Keysight Technologies, a US manufacturer of electronic test and measurement equipment and software, has completed end-to-end testing of ultra ethernet (UET) traffic across its data centre switching platforms, including the 7220 and 7250 Interconnect Routers (IXR).

The test demonstrates Nokia’s integration of Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) Specification 1.0 features into its networking portfolio, designed to support high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads.

It marks a step towards lossless, low-latency, large-scale data centre networks built for the demands of AI infrastructure.

Testing UET for next-generation network performance

The UEC Specification 1.0 defines a new ethernet layer optimised for HPC and AI environments, aiming to reduce latency and packet loss while maintaining interoperability across network architectures.

The joint test between Nokia and Keysight used 800 Gigabit ethernet interfaces with UET traffic generated via Keysight’s AresONE 800GE platform.

The network spanned Nokia’s 7220 IXR-H5 and 7250 IXR-10e systems, operating with the SR Linux network operating system.

According to Nokia, the test also validated coexistence with Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2) and Data Centre Quantised Congestion Notification (DCQCN) technologies, both already supported in its switching platforms.

Ram Periakaruppan, Vice President and General Manager of Network Applications and Security at Keysight Technologies, comments, “Networking technologies are evolving rapidly to meet the demands of large-scale AI clusters.

“Ultra ethernet is one of the approaches under active development, enabling the next generation of scale-out fabrics.

“Our collaboration with Nokia represents a key milestone in validating interoperability and accelerating adoption across the AI networking ecosystem.”

Rudy Hoebeke, Vice President of Software Product Management at Nokia, adds, “AI is redefining expectations for data centre network performance.

“This successful demonstration with Keysight of UET traffic over Nokia’s switching platforms underlines our commitment to the UEC initiative and reinforces our role in shaping the future of HPC and AI networking.”

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