NIC · Network Interface Card
The server's network adapter. AI nodes carry multiple RDMA-capable high-speed NICs — often one per GPU — as the on-ramp to the scale-out fabric.
Also written as: NICs
Current numbers
1.8 TB/s bidirectional (~0.9 TB/s per direction)NVLink 5 per-GPU bandwidth (~130 TB/s per GB200/GB300 NVL72 rack): ~18x GB200’s 400 Gb/s NIC, ~9x GB300’s 800 Gb/s
~18× GB200 / ~9× GB300NVLink 5 per-GPU scale-up (~900 GB/s per direction) vs one scale-out NIC per GPU: ~18× GB200/ConnectX-7/400G, ~9× GB300/ConnectX-8/800G
up to 1.6 Tb/sRubin per-GPU scale-out bandwidth: two 800 Gb/s ConnectX-9 SuperNICs per GPU, not one 1.6T NIC; double the ConnectX-8 generation