One of the announcements from the keynote at OCP Summit 2024 was the Meta Minipack3. Minipack has been a mainstay switch for Meta over the years we first covered in 2019. Now, we have the new version for the 51.2T generation.
Meta Minipack3 at OCP Summit 2024
During the OCP Summit 2024 Keynote, Meta talked about both the Broadcom Tomahawk 5 Minipack3 and the Cisco G200-powered Cisco 8501. On the show floor, we found one of the Minipack3 switches.
Here we have the front of the switch with 64 OSFP ports. You may see a QSFP28 port in the top right labeled as 65. The Minipack3 spec has a 100GbE (CR4)/ 50GbE (CR2) management port.
Meta said that it is using 800G optics and has also deployed dual 400G optics.
The control module is in the center. This is normally specd with something like the Intel Xeon D-1736.
The rear has power supplies and fans. Meta’s target is for this to be around 78dba.
All told, this Broadcom Tomahawk 5 51.2T switch can provide up to 128-ports of 400GbE. Meta says that this design should operate at under 2100W. That shows just how much power is being saved with co-packaged optics solutions like the Micas Networks Broadcom Tomahawk 5 CPO switch that is designed to run at under 1800W maximum.
Final Words
Meta’s Minipack line has been a really neat for many years. We always like to feature switches like this since there are teams doing great work. They also support a lot of infrastructure given they are deployed at Meta. We have been doing a lot of 400GbE/ 800GbE/ 51.2T switch content recently. We are seeing such a quick move to 400GbE that we want our readers to be well aware of this trend. This may be at Meta, but 400GbE makes things like AI clusters, super-fast remote storage, and more possible.
