In the Long Run, NVIDIA NVSwitch Is the InfiniBand of Scale-up AI Networks
The Next Platform, Monday, August 31st, 2026
NVSwitch echoes InfiniBand's HPC dominance, but Ethernet-based UALink and ESUN are circling the scale-up fabric.
The analysis positions NVIDIA's NVSwitch as playing the role in AI scale-up networking that InfiniBand played in high-performance computing. NVIDIA currently holds roughly 95 percent of GPU revenues and reinforces that position through proprietary NVSwitch licensing and lock-in.
Competing efforts including UALink and ESUN/SUE-T aim to open scale-up networking on commodity Ethernet infrastructure.
The piece leans on the old networking adage that Ethernet always wins because it steals every good idea from any fabric that can be broadly applied, suggesting the proprietary advantage is durable but not permanent.