Going through OCP Summit 2024 photos, we spotted hte Enfabrica ACF-S. Earlier this year we covered the Enfabrica ACF-S A HUGE Multi-Tbps SuperNIC at Hot Chips 2024. Now, instead of slideware, we also saw the actual chip, and it is a big one.
Enfabrica ACF-S Multi-Tbps SuperNIC Shown
At OCP Summit, we found this box filled with all kinds of different cards including older NVIDIA GPUs, the Astera Labs Leo-based Aurora A1000 cards, and more.
Pulling the system out a bit, we found that the chip inside was not a normal server chip. Instead, this is an Enfabrica ACF-S chip.
The quick overview of the chip from our Hot Chips 2024 coverage is that the chip has PCIe links as well as network links. Instead of traditional architectures where there might be two GPUs on a PCIe switch and then two NICs also on that switch, the ACF-S part can handle multiple GPUs and multiple network interfaces on the same chip. That lowers the number of add-in cards in a system, as well as providing the capability for inter-GPU communication directly through the larger switch chip.
Checking out the chip, it is certainly large. The fixture we saw feels like a test fixture with tons of different slots built-in.
The board itself was marked with Enfabrica and then the Thames ACF-S system.
Final Words
This is a chip that has the STH team excited. The ability to combine NIC and PCIe switch functionality and potentially yield more efficient networking seems awesome. The big question is now when will we see the new chips hit the market. Hopefully we get a box with one of these Enfabrica ACF-S chips in 2025. This is one of those technologies that could make a meaningful impact to GPU servers in the future.
