Shipments of high-speed Ethernet Controllers and Adapters - 25 Gbps and faster - had mixed results in the 4Q 2018 as Cloud Service Providers (SPs) varied deployments of servers, according to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group.
Concurrently, shipment of 10 Gbps adapters declined after six quarters of sequential growth as the Enterprise server refresh cycle eases.
“Growth in server purchases across the Cloud SPs was mixed. For instance, Amazon expanded server capacity in 4Q 2018, which drove the shipments of 25 Gbps Ethernet adapters. Conversely, Microsoft scaled back on server purchases which negatively impacted shipments of 40 Gbps ports,” said Baron Fung, Director at Dell’Oro Group. “As a result, adapter vendors with a strong cloud exposure, such as Mellanox, saw more volatility than the prior quarters. On the Enterprise side, shipments of 10 Gbps ports is starting to decline in tandem with the tail-end of the Xeon Scalable server refresh cycle,” Fung added.
Total controller and adapter port shipments declined 4 percent quarter over quarter in 4Q 2018. Shipment of 100 Gbps ports is forecasted to grow 79 percent in 2019 to the telecoms and cloud hyperscaler segments.The Smart NIC market is forecasted to grow nearly 40 percent in 2019.
