The  Smart NIC market will top $5 billion by 2028, says Dell’Oro.

Accelerated computing will continue to push the boundaries in server connectivity, demanding port speeds of 400 Gbps and higher speeds.

“The Ethernet Adapter market is poised for a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent, fueled by the increasing adoption of higher-speed ports and Smart NICs within data center infrastructures,” says Dell’Oro’s Baron Fung, “the hyperscale cloud service providers will drive rapid development in server connectivity, including increasing the adoption of customized Smart NICs and DPUs, and server port speeds reaching 800 Gbps in the next several years for accelerated computing. The rest of the market, which lags the hyperscale market in the deployment of these technologies, will still be an attractive market for the open vendors offering off the shelf solutions.”

Total Ethernet Controller and Adapter market, not counting the AI back-end network market, is forecast to exceed $8 billion by 2028.

The majority of the accelerated servers will have server access speeds of 400 Gbps and higher by 2028.

Smart NICs are expected to cannibalise Standard NICs during the forecast period.