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Comment by berbec | Hacker News Reader

400Gbps switches exist today [1]. They cost the annual budget of the NFL, but they do exist. 10Tbps "just" requires an increase of 25.

Now getting this in consumer-level hardware...

1: https://www.router-switch.com/n9k-c9316d-gx.html

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In switching, not NICs (yet).

They are only available switch<->switch? There are no nics? What's infiband up to now?

Looks like it's up to 1.2Tbps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand

Nobody has made 400G NICs because a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot is only 256 Gbps. Infiniband is currently at 200 Gbps because 8x and 12x modes are no longer used.

Thanks for the info. I only had quickipedia reference.

400Gbps interface, or total capacity? I assume you mean per-interface. Yeah they are crazy expensive currently.

Yeah I think it has 6.4Tb switching capacity.

How much to they actually cost on a per unit basis? Roughly?

If you're going by retail sucker pricing, a 32x100G switch is ~$10K so 32x400G should be <$40K. Hyperscale pricing should be under $10K.

I'm guessing since you need to get a quote, the answer is, "if you need to ask..."

If you need to ask... you are attempting to gather information to make a rational decision. I really dislike that [gatekeeping] meme. People who rely on "if you need to ask..." canards are most likely not in your interest.

That is not really about buyer, but seller. If seller hides price, that is usually good indicator. They know that they don't compete on price, that showing price frightens potential clients.

There are some markets (like 400G switches) where all the sellers say "call for pricing" so that doesn't really give you any information.

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