NVIDIA NVLink and NVLink Switch
The building blocks of high-speed, multi-GPU communication for feeding large datasets faster into models and rapidly exchanging data between GPUs.
A Need for Faster Scale-Up Interconnects
Unlocking the full potential of exascale computing and trillion-parameter AI models hinges on swift, seamless communication between every GPU within a server cluster. The fifth generation of NVIDIA NVLink™ is a scale-up interconnect which supercharges AI reasoning and accelerates performance for trillion-parameter inference models.
Maximize System Throughput with NVIDIA NVLink
Fifth-generation NVLink vastly improves scalability for larger multi-GPU systems by enabling GPUs to share memory and computations for training, inference, and reasoning workflows. A single NVIDIA Blackwell GPU supports up to 18 NVLink 100 gigabyte-per-second (GB/s) connections for a total bandwidth of 1.8 terabytes per second (TB/s )—2X more bandwidth than the previous generation and over 14X the bandwidth of PCIe Gen5. Server platforms like the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 take advantage of this technology to deliver greater scalability for today’s most complex large models.
NVLink At-Scale Performance
NVLink in NVIDIA GB300 increases inter-GPU communication bandwidth 2X compared to the previous generation, so researchers can use larger, more sophisticated applications to solve more complex problems.
Raise Reasoning Throughput With NVLink Communications
Fully Connect GPUs With NVIDIA NVLink and NVLink Switch
NVLink is a 1.8TB/s bidirectional, direct GPU-to-GPU interconnect that scales multi-GPU input and output (IO) within a server. The NVIDIA NVLink Switch chips connect multiple NVLinks to provide all-to-all GPU communication at full NVLink speed within a single rack and between racks.
To enable high-speed, collective operations, each NVLink Switch has engines for NVIDIA Scalable Hierarchical Aggregation and Reduction Protocol (SHARP)™ for in-network reductions and multicast acceleration.
Accelerate Test-Time Reasoning for Trillion- Parameter Models With NVLink Switch System
With NVLink Switch, NVLink connections can be extended across nodes to create a seamless, high-bandwidth, multi-node GPU cluster—effectively forming a data-center-sized GPU. NVIDIA NVLink Switch enables 130TB/s of GPU bandwidth in one GB300 NVL72 for large model parallelism. Multi-server clusters with NVLink scale GPU communications in balance with the increased computing, so NVL72 can support 9X the GPU count than a single eight-GPU system.
NVIDIA NVLink Switch
The NVIDIA NVLink 5 Switch features 144 NVLink ports with a non-blocking switching capacity of 14.4TB/s. The rack switch is designed to provide high bandwidth and low latency in NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems supporting external fifth-generation NVLink connectivity.
NVIDIA NVLink Fusion
NVIDIA NVLink™ Fusion delivers industry-leading AI scale-up and scale-out performance with NVIDIA technology plus semi-custom ASICs or CPUs, enabling hyperscalers to build an ASIC hybrid AI infrastructure with NVIDIA NVLink technology and rack-scale architecture.
Scaling From Enterprise to Exascale
Full Connection for Unparalleled Performance
The NVLink Switch is the first rack-level switch chip capable of supporting up to 576 fully connected GPUs in a non-blocking compute fabric. The NVLink Switch interconnects every GPU pair at an incredible 1,800GB/s. It supports full all-to-all communication. The 72 GPUs in the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 can be used as a single high-performance accelerator with up to 1.4 exaFLOPS of AI compute power.
The Most Powerful AI and HPC Platform
NVLink and NVLink Switch are essential building blocks of the complete NVIDIA data center solution that incorporates hardware, networking, software, libraries, and optimized AI models and applications from the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite and the NVIDIA NGC™ catalog. The most powerful end-to-end AI and HPC platform, it allows researchers to deliver real-world results and deploy solutions into production, driving unprecedented acceleration at every scale.
Specifications
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NVLink
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NVLink Switch
| Third Generation | Fourth Generation | Fifth Generation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVLink bandwidth per GPU | 600GB/s | 900GB/s | 1,800GB/s |
| Maximum Number of Links per GPU | 12 | 18 | 18 |
| Supported NVIDIA Architectures | NVIDIA Ampere architecture | NVIDIA Hopper™ architecture | NVIDIA Blackwell architecture |
| NVLink 3 Switch | NVLink 4 Switch | NVLink 5 Switch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of GPUs with direct connection within a NVLink domain | Up to 8 | Up to 8 | Up to 576 |
| NVSwitch GPU-to-GPU bandwidth | 600GB/s | 900GB/s | 1,800GB/s |
| Total aggregate bandwidth | 4.8TB/s | 7.2TB/s | 1PB/s |
| Supported NVIDIA architectures | NVIDIA Ampere architecture | NVIDIA Hopper™ architecture | NVIDIA Blackwell architecture |
Preliminary specifications; may be subject to change.
Take a deep dive into the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture.