Panduit
Executive perspectives from Panduit across NextGenInfra's event and research showcases.
2 video interviews · 2026
Power, Cooling & Fiber Optic Challenges
- Power constraints are pushing AI systems from air to liquid cooling.
- Higher data rates and multi-plane architectures of eight planes or more demand far more fiber infrastructure.
- Panduit focuses on foolproof, future-proof, and faster-to-deploy solutions to speed cloud providers' time to revenue.
Abstract
Bob Wagner, Senior Business Development Manager at Panduit, discusses how AI systems are driving major changes in data center infrastructure, including the shift from air to liquid cooling due to power constraints and the need for significantly more fiber optic infrastructure to support higher data rates and increasingly complex multi-plane architectures. He explains Panduit's three-pronged strategy of delivering foolproof solutions with protective features, future-proof installations that avoid premature replacement, and faster deployment times to help cloud vendors accelerate their time to revenue.
Optics Will Enable Massive GPU Interconnection
- Optics in scale-up architectures will be the biggest surprise of the next five years.
- Growing AI models need low latency and high bandwidth across ever-larger scale-up domains.
- Ethernet-based optics will take scale-up from 72 to 144, then 500, and eventually tens of thousands of GPUs acting as one.
Abstract
Jose M Castro, Fiber Optical Communication Research Manager at Panduit, discusses how the proliferation of optics in scale-up architectures will enable connectivity for hundreds of thousands of GPUs over the next five years. He explains that as AI models grow requiring low latency and high bandwidth, Ethernet-based optical solutions will be the key enabling technology to expand GPU interconnection from 72 to 144, then to 500, and ultimately to thousands or tens of thousands of GPUs functioning as a single unit.