Surfing the Agentic AI Wave in Network Operations
AvidThink is pleased to announce our latest research brief, “Data Center Networking in 2026”. This report examines how AI workloads are fueling a massive expansion of data center infrastructure, with leading technology companies projected to spend over 630 billion dollars on AI infrastructure in 2026. Designed for data center operators and cloud providers, the report explores the critical evolution of networking to enable AI cluster scaling from thousands to hundreds of thousands of GPUs.
Featured: The Three Coupled Design Problems
The report identifies that the network is three coupled problems, each with distinct physics and economics. We dive into the specific requirements of Scale-Up (intra-rack), Scale-Out (across racks), and Scale-Across (inter-data center) networking, covering the role of copper vs optics, and CPO (co-packaged optics), LPO (linear pluggable optics) as they seek to replace existing pluggables.
We also examine the "Extreme Co-Design" strategy, where compute, networking, memory, and software are architected as integrated platforms. This approach—exemplified by NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform—brings measurable performance gains but significantly increases ecosystem lock-in.
Our report provides in-depth analysis and actionable insights on the following key topics:
Executive Summary – Five transitions defining the evolution of AI networking.
Software Stack Analysis – The impact of collective communication libraries (NCCL, RCCL, etc), distributed training frameworks, and inference runtimes on network performance.
Scale-Up and Scale-Out technologies — NVLink, ESUN/SUE-T, UALink, Ethernet/Infiniband, ROCEv2, UET/UEC
Topology Evaluation – Trade-offs between Fat-Tree, Rail-Optimized, 3D Torus, and Dragonfly designs.
Interconnect Hierarchy – The relevancy of copper DAC and AEC in scale-out and the rise of 800G and 1.6T coherent optics for scale-across DCI.
Robustness and Fault Tolerance – How self-healing mechanisms and deep telemetry can save costs by preventing training job restarts.
Decision Framework – Guidance for networking architecture selection in 2026 across all three networking domains
Download the Full Report
Access AvidThink’s framework for understanding AI data center infrastructure. This resource is vital for any operator looking to navigate the next generation of networking for XPU/GPU clusters—download the full report today.
For inquiries regarding report sponsorship or to discuss your AI transformation journey, contact us at [email protected].