Data center switch maker Aria Networks raises $125M – News

Aria Networks Inc., a startup that makes switches for artificial intelligence clusters, has closed a $125 million funding round.

The capital was provided by Sutter Hill Ventures, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Eclipse Ventures. Aria disclosed the raise today in conjunction with the debut of its product portfolio. Deep Networking, as it’s called, is a collection of hardware and software components for building data center networks.

The centerpiece of Deep Networking is a suite of switches based on Ethernet, the data transfer protocol that underpins most AI clusters. The switches use the latest 800G and 1.6T versions of the protocol. The former edition can process 800 gigabits of data traffic per second per port, while the latter technology can manage up to 1.6 terabits.

The primary difference between the two Ethernet implementations has to do with a component called the SerDes. Processors represent information as multiple parallel streams of data. Before a chip can transmit information, it has to consolidate it into a single data stream. That task is the responsibility of the SerDes. The reason 1.6T Ethernet is faster than the 800G edition is that its SerDes provide twice the throughput.

Aria sells a 64-port 1.6T switch that comes in air and liquid-cooled editions. When ports are congested, a component called a packet buffer can temporarily store the delayed data traffic that is waiting to be processed. That removes the need to discard the traffic and thereby avoids the associated inefficiencies.

Aria also offers switches based on 800G Ethernet. There are 64- and 128-port devices that can manage up to 51.2 terabits and 102.4 terabits of traffic per second, respectively.

The company’s switches are powered by a custom version of SONiC, an open-source network operating system based on Linux. It has a containerized design that enables administrators to update a malfunctioning module without taking the others offline. There’s also support for a technology called RoCE. It enables the data traffic in AI clusters to bypass certain hardware components on their way to their destination, which boosts performance.

Aria has equipped its software stack with a telemetry engine that collects technical information about the underlying hardware. According to the company, the data is up to 10,000 times more detailed than the telemetry gathered by other tools.

AI agents use the telemetry to optimize customer networks. According to Aria, the agents automate tasks such as load balancing and congestion management. When the software spots a potential technical issue, it alerts a human. Administrators can investigate malfunctions by entering natural language questions into a chat box.

Aria says that it already “has customer orders in hand.” The company is currently in the process of rolling out its technology to early adopters’ networks. 

Image: Aria