The document discusses Dell Technologies' approach to networking for generative AI, highlighting the integration of Ethernet and AI fabric to support complex workloads. It emphasizes the importance of low latency, high bandwidth connections for AI tasks, and outlines the features and advancements in their Enterprise SONiC platform, aimed at disaggregating hardware and providing flexible solutions. The document also mentions market trends and Dell's commitment to offering open-source solutions while ensuring performance and reliability for enterprise needs.

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Disclaimer
This presentation contains references to certain features, functionality, enhancements,
or other technology that may not be currently available. This information is intended to
outline our general product direction and should not be relied upon in making current
purchasing decisions. These references are: i) for information purposes only, ii) may not
be incorporated into any contract, and iii) do not constitute a commitment, promise or legal
obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release and
timing of any features, functionality, enhancements, or other technology described remains
at the sole discretion of Dell Technologies.
Last update of this deck: November 2023
© Copyright 2022 Dell Inc.
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Internal Use - Confidential

2. The Fabric of AI:
SONiC Fueling
Network-Centric Computing
Director of System Engineering, Networking
Sandeep Madhavan
November, 2023

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A G E N D A Generative AI and Ethernet Fabric
Vision and Strategy
 Enterprise SONiC distribution by Dell Technologies
 Dell Networking for Generative AI
Road Ahead
Internal Use - Confidential

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Ethernet Proliferation
Powering largest AI Cloud fabric deployments
~600M
Ethernet ports shipped annually!
Reference: Presentation by Ram V, Broadcom at OCP Global Summit

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What makes AI
Networking
unique?
• GPU to GPU
Communication Drives
higher bandwidth flows
• Bursty traffic
• Links are saturated in
Micro-seconds
• Training jobs run for long
periods
• Tail latency impacts job
completion time
OCP Keynote by Alexis Bjorlin at 2022 Global Summit

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GenAI Infrastructure Building blocks – Compute Backend (GPU)
Fabric
• Objective: GPU to GPU connectivity to execute an
AI/ML training or inference job. This fabric is where
GPUs are going to perform hyper-parameter
optimizations
• Fabric Highlights
– Dedicated fabric for GPU <-> GPU communication.
– Model training and inferencing traffic
– Ethernet solutions evolving as a preferred choice
– Performance approaching InfiniBand specs
– Each GPU-Server will have 8x400G or 8x(2x200G)
connectivity to leaf switches.
– NIC is connected to GPU & CPU
– Software Requirements :
▪ Low latency fabric
▪ High Radix switches
▪ Lower tail latency

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GenAI Infrastructure Building blocks – Frontend Fabric
Storage Fabrics
• Objective: Storage fabric provides access to large-scale shared storage
infrastructure. This storage is used as a shared resources for GPUs to
communicate hyper-parameters during AI/ML training or inference jobs
• Fabric Highlights
– Fabric for GPU to storage server communication.
– Typically, 25G/100G connectivity with ethernet solutions
In-band/Access/Cluster Fabrics
• Objective: This fabric is used to distribute the AI/ML jobs on to the Data
Center back-end network on GPU. In-band Management prioritizes,
batches, and provides/allocates the necessary resources (GPUs, Storage,
Network) for AI/ML applications.
• Fabric Highlights
– Fabric for managing the AI/ML jobs assignment on GPUs
– Typically, 25G/100G connectivity with ethernet solutions
– Multitenancy use-cases

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GenAI Infrastructure Building blocks – OOB Use case
• Objective: OOB Fabric provides management for
GPU/Storage servers, Ethernet / InfiniBand
switches, appliances (firewall, load balancer) etc.
• OOB network on server use iDRAC interface to
read temperature/thermals, CPU/GPU utilization,
miscellaneous sensor information.
• 1G ethernet connectivity solution with basic L2/L3
features

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Bringing it
ALL
together –
AI fabric
Back-End (GPU Fabric)
has most demanding
requirements for raw
performance, lossless
attributes and lowest
latency
Front-End fabrics
support application
traffic, storage access
and connection to the
general network
OOB Mgmt Network for
administration and fabric
management
Delivering Ethernet Solutions across all use cases within AI
Fabrics

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Ethernet evolving to be the preferred choice for
backend AI fabrics
• Market inflection points for Ethernets powered by AI fabrics
– Availability of High Radix switching with next-Gen silicon technologies – 64x400G (25.6T), 64x800G(51.2T), 102.4T…
– Improved congestion monitoring, flow control, and Transport (RoCEv2) protocol availability in NOS
– Community effort to drive Ethernet Standards – Ultra Ethernet Consortium
– Desire for no-vendor lock-in infrastructures – InfiniBand (Nvidia), Ethernet (Commodity vendor market)
– Silicon and supplier diversity
– Lower Total Cost of Ownership (~3x lower)
– Latency improvements with next Gen Silicon from 800ns to 200ns

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Dell Enterprise SONiC < -- > Dell SmartFabricOS10 with SmartFabric Services
Networking Evolution and Market Trends
5G & IoT AI/ML
Data boom
at Edge
Distributed infra
Cloud & On-prem
Zero Trust
Next gen
automation
K E Y M AR K E T T R E N D S TAR G E T I N D U S T RY
• Service Provides (T2 Cloud, Infra, Software)
• Large Enterprises
• Higher Ed & Research
• Retail, eCommerce
• Semiconductors
• Telco
• Automotive
• Manufacturing
C U S TO M E R N E E D S - C o n t r o l , E x t e n s i b i l i t y a n d Ag i l i t y
D E L L T E C H N O L O G I E S P O R T F O L I O
Next-Gen Data Center
& Edge switching
SmartNIC/DPU for co-lo
and faster data processing at Edge
Virtual Edge platform/uCPE
for Edge computing
Integrations & Ecosystem
Partner Solutions
• Cloud economics
• High operational agility
• Application Centricity
• Scalability & Security
• Multi vendor
• Deep analytics and telemetry
• Green Initiatives/sustainability
• Investment Protection
• Open ecosystem – Software & Tools
• World-class Support
• Standards for Interoperability
• Ease of network management
• 25G in Rack (50G,100G for select workloads)
• Fabric transitions to 400G
• Multi-cloud strategy
• Network disaggregation

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Current Solutions in the Market
Locked in and complicated
• Control
– Focused on locked-in solution
• Choice
– Not much control over the choice of software for use cases
• Cost
– Expensive
– Locked a single source supply and short lead times
• Convenience
– Automation is an afterthought and dependency on the proprietary controller. Almost never works for
customers but they throw people at the problem.
• Customization
– Architecture not viable for quick customization to achieve an unique outcome

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OPEN SOURCE NOS OPEN SOURCE NOS (COMMERCIAL)
OPEN NETWORKING
OPEN SOURCE OS OPEN SOURCE OS (COMMERCIAL)
Networking Following the
Footsteps of Compute Evolution
Server
OS
Evolution
NOS
Evolution
Linux is Born Red Hat offers Enterprise Linux
Capitalizes on market demand
Slackware, SuSe,
Debian, Red Hat Linux, etc.
Linux Distros
Enterprise ready, reliable
and supported solution
1991 1995 2002 2015
Red Hat leverages Linux
Spans eco system solution
Ansible, OpenShift,
OpenStack
2014 2016 2020 2021 2022
Dell Technologies offers
Enterprise SONiC
Open Networking (ON) Open Source NOS
Eco system around
Enterprise SONiC
Expanded
Use cases
Dell Technologies onboards
3rd party NOSs (e.g., Big Switch,
Pluribus) on Dell platforms
Microsoft contributes SONiC to OCP,
Dell Technologies continued partnership
with OCP to develop ONIE, SAI and SONiC
An Enterprise ready and
supported distribution of SONiC
Ansible, Prometheus,
Telegraf, Augtera, Apstra
Edge: Retail/Branch office
DCI BGP EVPN Multi-site

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SONiC – Innovation of the industry > 1 Vendor Solution
Conference Date Location
SONiC Workshop
India 2023
September 6,
2023
India
OSS Europe,
SONiC Mini
Summit
September
18, 2023
Spain
Open Compute
Project, , SONiC
Mini Summit
October 17-
19, 2023
San Jose,
CA
Open Networking
User Group
(ONUG)
October 24-
25, 2023
New York
City
Dell Technologies Participation in
upcoming SONiC focused Industry
Conferences

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Vision & Strategy
VISION STRATEGY
• Cloud-inspired NOS to provide Enterprises
with reliability, flexibility and disaggregation
• Be the Linux of Networking
• Flexible standards based Open interfaces
• Offer commercial distribution of SONiC
• Enable one unified NOS across the
product portfolio
• Enterprise enablement – Extending SONiC from
DC to Edge, Telco & Enterprise DC features
• Value proposition :
• E2E Support –
SW, HW, Ecosystem technologies
• Global supply chain
• Predictable Roadmap
• Ecosystem partner technologies
• Documentation and Training
Dell Enterprise SONiC
Customers want full control and choice of the technology stack – HW, SW, and ecosystem tools, at optimal cost while avoiding
vendor lock-in
+ Dell qualified OpenHW platforms
NOS Standardization
Open Interfaces
Choice
of
Support
Ecosystem & Apps
Build a fabric to fit your needs
Broader portfolio options enable greater flexibility
in fabric use cases and architectures
Single NOS in a multi-vendor environment
Invest in a future-proof network with confidence
without reliance on a single vendor roadmap
Choice, flexibility and simplicity with
Enterprise support
Unified software allows simplicity and ease of
use

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Dell Customer Communication - Confidential
Enterprise
SONiC
by Dell
Technologies
Partner
ecosystem
Enterprise
and cloud
datacenter
features
Tested &
validated
Global
HW/SW
support
PowerSwitch
HW
Automation
Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies
Enterprise Ready
Support Services
Community
Contribution
Use case driven
Integrations
Automation
and Visibility
Tools and
Utilities
Education
• Enterprise grade features and hardening
• Feature visibility
• Global 24x7 ProSupport and ProDeploy
• 1M+ lines of code | 5K+ defect/bug fixes
• Ansible modules | User groups
• User documentation
• Cloud use case
• Enterprise use case
• Edge use case
• Ecosystem partners: Augtera, Apstra, Dorado
• Open-source solutions: Ansible Collection certified
by RedHat, Telegraf, Prometheus, OpenStack
• Open source, open interfaces
• Telemetry and Deep analytics
• Automation ready
• Container-based architecture
• 3rd-party container management
• Virtual demos, Hands-on Labs, Fabric Design Center,
Technical papers, User documentation

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Dell Customer Communication - Confidential
Exponential Growth and Adoption of SONiC
SONiC promises innovation
like Linux transformation of
server OS Market, by
removing ties w/ hardware
vendors & standardizing NOS
Market Differentiators
SONiC is predicted to be a
long-term market disruption
driver
Disruption
SONiC promises innovation
like Linux transformation of
server OS Market, by
removing ties w/ hardware
vendors & standardizing NOS
Innovation
For mission-critical data
centers, consider using
commercially supported
distributions of SONiC to
ensure stability and reliability
Commercial Support
Recommended

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2019 2020 1H’CY21 2H’CY21 1H’CY22 1H’CY23
Enterprise SONiC and open-source contributions
Layer 3 Cloud
 Enterprise SONiC ProSupport
 Custom Deployment services
 2 courses at Dell University
 5 Technical marketing papers
 9 Webinars
 2 NSE Bootcamps
 User documentation, config, and
deployment guides with every Rel.(6)
 Integrations (Apstra, Augtera, Ansible,
Fabric Design Center)
 Social media, press and analyst
coverage, industry roundtable
 3 weeklong Sales & Services deep-dives
 4 HoL modules at democenter.com
 4 HoL modules for Ansible w/ E-SONiC
 40+ Channel partners trained
 Team.Blue (Customer) case study & video
testimonial
 Product marketing videos capturing key
features, use cases, solution integrations
Enterprise fabrics Edge and Telco
Product Enablement
Enterprise SONiC
• Greenfield use cases and flat
layer 3 network architecture
• Infrastructure as a code
foundation
Enterprise features, quality,
stability and interoperability and
Scalability
• Security – Certs and
Functionalities
• Edge functionality
• NVMe, HPC and Telco use cases
Higher Education and
Research
Managed Cloud Services
Telco, CSP, Infrastructure
Web 2.0
FinTech
System
Integrator
Onboarding
Semiconductors
Automotive
Retail, eCommerce
Real world environment
Customer
Segments

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Ecosystem for Configuration, Telemetry and Monitoring

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Fabric/Spine switches
PowerSwitch Z series
(100G to 400G
Top-of-rack/Leaf switches
PowerSwitch S series
(1G to 100G)
MXL/IOA
for
M1000e
Module I/O
FN-IOM for
FX2
Edge
PowerSwitch E series
(1G/10G – PoE)
Ecosystem partners
Next-generation access
Virtual
Edge
Platform
uCPE
Networking software
SmartFabric OS10 SFS
MX modules for
MX7000
SD-WAN
Edge
Powered by
Versa
Dell Enterprise
SONiC
Dell Networking Products Portfolio
Products are aligned per market trends, technology evolution, and best practices

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Expanding Use Case Enablement

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Enabling GenAI Use case with Dell Enterprise SONiC
Z 9 6 6 4 F 1
Z 9 6 6 4 F 1
4 X E 9 6 8 0
w i t h 8 G P U s
Z 9 6 6 4 F 3 2
Z 9 6 6 4 F 1 6
4 X E 9 6 8 0
w i t h 8 G P U s
400G-SR4
QSFP-DD
Back-End Fabric
Z 9 4 3 2 F S 5 4 4 8 - O N
Front-End Fabric
/
Connection to storage and application traffic
N 3 2 4 8 T E
OOB Management
S 5 2 x x - O N
/
Front-End Fabric
Use case: Cluster / Storage / Access Fabric
Platforms:
400G/100G dense deployments
Z9664F-ON, Z9432F-ON (400G)
100G Standard deployments
S5448F-ON, S5232F-ON (100G)
25G Standard deployments
S5296F-ON, S5248F-ON
1G OOB
N3248TE-ON
Back-End Fabric
Use case: GPU to GPU Connectivity
Platform: Z9664F-ON [Tomahawk4, 64x400G + 2x 10G]
Scale:
• Single switch topology: Up to 64 GPUs
• Fabric topology: Up to 2048 GPUs
Roadmap 1HCY24: Z9864F [Tomahawk 5, 64x800G]
Expected Scale:
• Single switch topology: Up to 128 GPUs
• Fabric topology: Up to 8192 GPUs
Network Operating System
Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies
Release 4.2
Feature Highlights:
• RoCEv2 – Lossless fabric, PFC, ETS, ECN
• Cut-Through Switching
• Enhanced Hashing
Monitoring & Orchestration
Augtera Monitoring solution
BeyondEdge Fabric Orchestration Solution
Z 9 6 6 4 F /

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High Performance Compute
and Storage Infrastructure
Validated architecture solution
Software Driven Innovation
Resilient, Scalable, and Open-Source
Delivering an Ethernet Powered infrastructure for GenAI use
cases
Storage
PowerScale,
ECS, ObjectScale
Server
PowerEdge
Networking
PowerSwitch
(TH4, TH5*)
Accelerated AI
Energy efficient
Flexible Architecture
Cloud Inspired Architecture
Open and Extensible
Intelligent Orchestration and Monitoring
Solutions – 3rd party tools (BeyondEdge,
Augtera) and Dell internal tools
Next Gen AI Silicon Ethernet
Fabric
High Bandwidth Connectivity with High Radix
and Low Power
High Performance
Low Latency
Secure & Protect
Up to 51.2 Terabits/sec Bandwidth
Cognitive Routing
Shared Packet Buffering
*Roadmap/Scoping

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Dell's unique approach leverages simplified, tailored and
trusted solutions that combine your data with the power of
Generative AI to drive innovation and tangible business value.
Dell is the #1 worldwide provider in AI
Infrastructure
We offer full-stack scalable Generative AI
solutions with validated reference
architectures
Provide deep AI expertise at every stage
to accelerate tangible time-to-value
1 Source: IDC Semiannual AI Tracker: Worldwide Server and Storage Revenue, 2021 and 2022 H1
Why Dell for Generative AI?

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Software, not Hardware
Disaggregation from hardware provides
more choice, flexibility and protects against
supply chain disruption
Summary
Essential networking platform for Dell Technologies Innovation Engine
Cloud-inspired, Outcome-based
Customers want to spend
less on managing technology and
more toward producing results
Edge to Core to Cloud
Customers seek a trusted technology partner
with a seamless end-to-end solution
Focusing on software and innovation
Changes in traditional markets and
emergence of new opportunities
Market/Customer Trends Customer Outcomes Focus Areas
Software Defined Networking
Focus on solution, not product
Traditional Networking
End to End Dell Networking portfolio
Integrated, Embedded,
and Attached Networking
Providing connectivity advantages
with Dell Servers and Storage
Completing
Dell Technology
value prop
Investing in
market macro
trends
Enabling synergy
in complete
Infrastructure
Solutions
Drive solutions in
DC and Edge
Tier 2
CSP
APEX
Emerging
Networking
Address growing
new use cases
VLE /
Telecom
Edge
Optimizing enterprise solutions
and investing in growth markets
Solution Enablement
APEX, Multi-cloud, Edge, Telco
Server
Storage Solutions
Modernize
the Core
Business
Emerging
Growth
Areas
Control
Fabric
NOS
Network
Hardware
Next set of innovation
SONiC
Switches, DPU
Orchestrators

27. Thank You!
Learn more at
dell.com/networking