According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the smart network interface card (NIC) market will grow at a 42 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and exceed US$5 billion in 2027, driven by connectivity needs of accelerated servers for AI workloads and next generation hyperscale general-purpose servers, which will transition to 200 Gbps and higher-speed ports over the next several years.
The report also noted that the total ethernet controller and adapter market revenue is forecast to grow 14 per cent by 2027, and that smart NICs are expected to cannibalize standard NICs during the forecast period. Dell’Oro expects that 400 Gbps ethernet adapter port shipments will account for more than 10 per cent of 25 Gbps and higher speed ports by 2027.
“We recently raised our smart NIC revenue forecast because of strong adoption among the hyperscale cloud service providers,” said Baron Fung, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “An increasing share of the hyperscale servers will be deployed with 200 Gbps and higher speed server facing ports for accelerated computing, and for next-generation general-purpose servers. While the hyperscale cloud service providers mainly deploy their internally developed smart NIC solutions, some of the major open vendors such as Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA are making progress. Furthermore, there are opportunities for the non-hyperscale market for off-the-shelf smart NIC solutions, with use cases such as accelerated computing, distributed storage, and network security.”
