Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO), a global leader in semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions, today announced the shipment of its breakthrough Ethernet switch—the Tomahawk Ultra. Engineered to transform the Ethernet switch for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads, Tomahawk Ultra delivers industry-leading ultra-low latency, massive throughput, and lossless networking.

"Tomahawk Ultra is a testament to innovation, involving a multi-year effort by hundreds of engineers who reimagined every aspect of the Ethernet switch," said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Core Switching Group. "This highlights Broadcom's commitment to invest in advancing Ethernet for high-performance networking and AI scale-up."

The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) today announces the release of UEC Specification 1.0, a comprehensive, Ethernet-based communication stack engineered to meet the demanding needs of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads. This release marks a critical step forward in redefining Ethernet for next-generation, data-intensive infrastructure.

UEC Specification 1.0 delivers a high-performance, scalable, and interoperable solution across all layers of the networking stack—including NICs, switches, optics, and cables—enabling seamless multivendor integration and accelerating innovation throughout the ecosystem.

Broadcom Inc. announced today that it is now shipping the Tomahawk 6 switch series, delivering the world's first 102.4 Terabits/sec of switching capacity in a single chip - double the bandwidth of any Ethernet switch currently available on the market. With unprecedented scale, energy efficiency, and AI-optimized features, Tomahawk 6 is built to power the next generation of scale-up and scale-out AI networks, delivering unmatched flexibility with support for 100G/200G SerDes and co-packaged optics (CPO). It offers the industry's most comprehensive set of AI routing features and interconnect options, designed to meet the demands of AI clusters with more than one million XPUs.

"Tomahawk 6 is not just an upgrade - it's a breakthrough," said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. "It marks a turning point in AI infrastructure design, combining the highest bandwidth, power efficiency, and adaptive routing features for scale-up and scale-out networks into one platform. Demand from customers and partners has been unprecedented. Tomahawk 6 is poised to make a rapid and dramatic impact on the deployment of large AI clusters."

AMD is gearing up to expand its Instinct MI family in the latter half of 2026 with two purpose‑built UDNA‑based accelerators. These new models, MI430X UL4 and MI450X, will cater respectively to high‑precision HPC tasks and large‑scale AI workloads. The MI430X UL4 is designed for applications that rely heavily on double‑precision FP64 floating‑point performance, such as scientific simulations, climate modeling, and others. It features a large array of FP64 tensor cores, ensuring consistent throughput for tightly coupled compute jobs. Because a dedicated UALink switch from partners like Astera Labs or Broadcom won't be available at launch, AMD has chosen a four‑GPU point‑to‑point mesh configuration for the MI430X UL4. This limited scale‑up approach keeps latency low and synchronization tight, making it ideal for small cluster deployments. On the AI side, the MI450X embraces Ethernet‑based Ultra Ethernet for scale‑out.

With UEC‑ready switches already on the market, this open‑standard networking solution lets users build expansive AI farms across dozens or even hundreds of nodes. By relying on established Ethernet technology instead of the new UALink ecosystem, AMD provides customers with immediate, hardware‑accelerated networking for both inference and training. While UALink promises an open, vendor‑neutral accelerator-to-accelerator fabric, its progress has been slow. Committee reviews and limited investment in switch silicon have delayed switch availability. Broadcom, viewed as the primary UALink switch supplier, has been cautious about its commitment, given expected lower volumes compared to Ethernet alternatives. AMD's acceleration segmentation addresses these realities. The MI430X UL4 delivers high‑precision compute in compact GPU meshes. The MI450X offers large‑scale AI connectivity via Ethernet. Should UALink switch development catch up in the future, AMD could revisit native GPU‑to‑GPU fabrics.