AMD Pensando Vulcano

Overview

AMD Pensando Vulcano is the next-generation AI NIC announced at OCP Global Summit 2025, targeting a 2026 shipment. Built on a 3nm process, it delivers 800 Gbps network throughput with support for UAL (Ultra Accelerator Link) and PCIe Gen6. Paired with AMD MI450 GPUs — which provide 32 UAL lanes (each 8-lane group supporting 800 Gbps) — the combined system delivers 3.2 Tbps total scale-out bandwidth per GPU, an 8x improvement over the current MI300/350 generation (400 Gbps via 16 PCIe Gen5 lanes).

Vulcano is software forward-and-backward compatible with Pollara 400, reusing all existing P4 programs for multi-plane networking, path-aware congestion management, and scale-across features. It ships with Ultra Ethernet as the first-day transport. The NIC handles both scale-out (intra-DC) and scale-across (multi-site) connectivity.