Nokia has announced a significant expansion of its data centre networking portfolio, aimed at enhancing performance and scalability to meet the growing demands of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. The company introduced its new family of 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) high-performance data centre switches, alongside an upgraded suite of Artificial Intelligence for Operations (AIOps) tools for its Event-Driven Automation (EDA) management platform. These innovations are designed to provide the necessary performance and reliability for advanced AI training and inference workloads.
The rapid emergence of agentic AI applications is reshaping data centre requirements, prompting a swift evolution in networking solutions. Nokia’s latest developments reflect a dual opportunity for network innovation and operational transformation, driven by the increasing reliance on AI technologies.
Tom Burke, Chief Revenue Officer at Nscale, remarked, “Our partnership with Nokia continues to deliver meaningful operating advantages amid the accelerating pace of AI innovation. With Nokia’s technology, Nscale strengthens its ability to deliver for our shared customers.” He emphasized that the new switches’ 1.6 TE interface speeds are well-timed to address the evolving demands of data centre networking.
Enhanced Performance and Scalability
To tackle the substantial demands for scalability and high performance in AI data centres, Nokia’s 7220 IXR-H6 switches can achieve throughput of up to 102.4 Tb/s, with interface speeds reaching 800 GE and 1.6 TE. This represents a doubling of throughput and interface speeds within the same physical footprint. The switches comply with Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) specifications, featuring advanced capabilities to optimize packet flows, reduce congestion, and improve network efficiency across expansive AI environments that may include up to one million XPUs or more.
The Nokia 7220 IXR-H6 family is designed for flexibility, offering both liquid-cooled and air-cooled versions that can be integrated into a variety of data centre rack configurations. Notably, Nokia stands out as the only vendor providing hardware that supports both an embedded Network Operating System (NOS) and SONiC. This allows data centre operators to choose between Nokia’s SR Linux NOS or the open-source Community SONiC, ensuring tailored software solutions that meet specific infrastructure needs.
AI-Enabled Network Operations
As cloud service providers and enterprises prioritize automation and AIOps to enhance operational resilience, Nokia is introducing agentic AI capabilities into its EDA platform. These enhancements combine natural language interactions with the analytical power of agentic AI, facilitating rapid issue identification, root cause analysis, and resolution across the data centre networking landscape.
Nokia’s EDA AIOps platform, complemented by extensive real-time telemetry and integrated digital twin features, offers network operators tools to quickly address issues. A report from Bell Labs Consulting highlights the potential for a 96% reduction in data centre network downtime with these innovations, demonstrating their critical impact on operational efficiency.
According to Vach Kompella, Senior Vice President and General Manager of IP Networks at Nokia, “The astonishing growth in AI adoption has led to a dramatic overhaul in how data centres operate.” He added that the introduction of the new 7220 IXR-H6 switches and advancements in the EDA platform represent a milestone in Nokia’s data centre networking offerings.
The 7220 IXR-H6 switches are set to be available in the first quarter of 2026, while the AIOps features on the EDA platform will be demonstrated soon, with deployment expected by the end of 2025. This timeline positions Nokia to continue its leadership in providing innovative solutions for the evolving demands of AI in data centre environments.
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