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NVIDIA ConnectX-7 400Gb/s Smart Network Adapter

The NVIDIA ConnectX-7 is a high-performance Smart Network Adapter designed for modern data centers, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing (HPC), hyperscale cloud, storage, and enterprise networking environments.

Supporting up to 400Gb/s total network bandwidth, ConnectX-7 provides both InfiniBand and Ethernet connectivity, depending on the specific adapter configuration. It supports advanced networking technologies including RDMA, RoCE, GPUDirect RDMA, GPUDirect Storage, SR-IOV, hardware offloads, NVIDIA In-Network Computing, and accelerated security functions.

The adapter uses a PCI Express Gen 5 host interface and is available in several physical configurations, including PCIe HHHL/FHHL and OCP 3.0 form factors. Depending on the exact model, ConnectX-7 cards can provide single-, dual-, or multi-port connectivity and support speeds from 10GbE up to 400GbE.

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Description

The NVIDIA ConnectX-7 family represents a generation of high-speed network adapters engineered to remove networking bottlenecks in GPU-accelerated computing and data-intensive infrastructure.

With support for 400Gb/s networking, ConnectX-7 is particularly suited to AI training clusters, distributed HPC systems, large-scale storage environments, cloud infrastructure, and high-performance enterprise networks where extremely high throughput and low latency are required.

High-Speed Ethernet and InfiniBand

ConnectX-7 supports both major high-performance networking ecosystems:

  • InfiniBand NDR up to 400Gb/s
  • InfiniBand HDR up to 200Gb/s
  • Ethernet up to 400GbE
  • 200GbE
  • 100GbE
  • 50GbE
  • 40GbE
  • 25GbE
  • 10GbE

Specific supported speeds depend on the adapter OPN, port configuration, transceiver/cable, and network infrastructure.

PCIe Gen 5 Connectivity

The ConnectX-7 platform supports PCIe Gen 5, providing a high-bandwidth host connection for servers equipped with modern PCIe infrastructure. Current NVIDIA documentation specifies PCIe Gen 5/Gen 4 operation through an x16 interface on supported adapter configurations.

RDMA and Low-Latency Networking

Hardware-accelerated Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) allows data to be transferred between systems with reduced CPU involvement and lower latency. This is particularly valuable for distributed AI, HPC, storage, and clustered applications.

For Ethernet deployments, ConnectX-7 supports RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), including advanced RoCE acceleration features.

AI and GPU-Accelerated Computing

ConnectX-7 is designed to work closely with NVIDIA GPU infrastructure. Technologies such as GPUDirect RDMA and GPUDirect Storage can help accelerate data movement between networking, GPUs, and storage systems while reducing unnecessary CPU data copies.

This makes ConnectX-7 especially appropriate for distributed AI training and inference clusters, scientific computing, and GPU-accelerated data centers.

Smart Networking and Hardware Offload

The adapter provides hardware acceleration for networking, storage, virtualization, and security workloads. Features include SR-IOV, overlay networking acceleration, programmable packet processing, TCP/IP offloads, QoS, flow processing, and accelerated security functions.

Port Flexibility

Certain ConnectX-7 models support port splitting, allowing a high-speed physical interface to be divided into multiple logical network ports. For example, NVIDIA documents a ConnectX-7 configuration capable of operating as one 400GbE port or four 100GbE ports, depending on the specific OPN and configuration.


3. Complete Technical Specification

Specification Details
Product Family NVIDIA ConnectX-7
Product Type Smart Network Adapter / Host Channel Adapter
Primary Applications AI, HPC, cloud, storage, enterprise networking, hyperscale data centers
Maximum Total Bandwidth Up to 400Gb/s
InfiniBand Up to NDR 400Gb/s
InfiniBand Standards IBTA Specification 1.5
Ethernet Up to 400GbE
Ethernet Speeds 10/25/40/50/100/200/400GbE, depending on model
Host Interface PCI Express Gen 5
PCIe Interface Up to x16 on standard PCIe adapter configurations; some Socket Direct configurations support additional PCIe connectivity
PCIe Compatibility PCIe Gen 5 / Gen 4 / Gen 3 and other backward-compatible configurations depending on card
Network Connector QSFP/QSFP112, OSFP, or other connector configuration depending on OPN
Port Configuration 1, 2, or 4 ports depending on model
Port Splitting Supported on selected models
RDMA Supported
RoCE Supported
GPUDirect RDMA Supported
GPUDirect Storage Supported
SR-IOV Supported
NVIDIA In-Network Computing Supported
NVIDIA Multi-Host Supported on applicable configurations
Socket Direct Supported on applicable configurations
Virtualization Hardware-assisted virtualization and SR-IOV
Overlay Networking VXLAN, GENEVE, NVGRE and related acceleration
Security Acceleration Hardware-assisted TLS, IPsec and MACsec functions on applicable Ethernet configurations
Network Processing Hardware packet processing and programmable acceleration
Form Factors PCIe HHHL, FHHL; OCP 3.0 TSFF/SFF
Operating Systems Linux, Windows, VMware and supported virtualization/container environments
Linux Software NVIDIA OFED / OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution
Windows Software WinOF-2
Management NVIDIA management and firmware utilities
Typical Deployment Data-center server / AI server / HPC node / storage server
Maximum Throughput Up to 400Gb/s
Architecture NVIDIA ConnectX-7 networking architecture

Specifications vary between ConnectX-7 OPNs; NVIDIA’s current documentation lists multiple configurations with different port counts, connector types, speeds and physical designs.


4. Applications

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

  • Distributed AI training
  • Large-scale GPU clusters
  • AI inference infrastructure
  • GPU-to-GPU data movement
  • Multi-node deep-learning environments
  • High-performance AI factories

High-Performance Computing

  • Scientific simulations
  • Engineering simulations
  • Computational research
  • Molecular modeling
  • Weather and climate modeling
  • Financial modeling
  • Parallel computing clusters

Data Centers & Cloud

  • Hyperscale cloud infrastructure
  • High-speed server networking
  • Private and public cloud platforms
  • Data-center interconnects
  • High-throughput application servers

Storage

  • NVMe-oF environments
  • High-performance storage networks
  • Distributed storage
  • Software-defined storage
  • GPUDirect Storage architectures

Enterprise Networking

  • High-speed Ethernet aggregation
  • Virtualized data centers
  • Network-intensive enterprise applications
  • High-performance database infrastructure
  • Telecommunications and service-provider infrastructure

5. Compatibility

The NVIDIA ConnectX-7 is designed for servers and workstations equipped with compatible PCI Express Gen 5/Gen 4 infrastructure, with exact requirements determined by the adapter model.

It can be deployed with:

  • NVIDIA GPU-accelerated servers
  • AI/HPC servers
  • Enterprise rack servers
  • High-performance storage servers
  • NVIDIA networking infrastructure
  • Ethernet switches supporting the selected link speed
  • NVIDIA InfiniBand switches
  • RoCE-enabled Ethernet environments
  • VMware virtualization environments
  • Linux and Windows server platforms
  • Kubernetes and containerized environments

NVIDIA documentation lists interoperability with Ethernet switches from 1/10/25/40/50/100/200/400Gb/s and InfiniBand infrastructures supporting SDR through NDR200, depending on the adapter configuration.

Important: Because ConnectX-7 covers numerous OPNs, the exact compatibility of a particular card should be checked against its full part number. Connector type, port count, maximum speed, InfiniBand/Ethernet mode, bracket and power requirements can differ between variants.


6. Key Benefits

  • Up to 400Gb/s networking for extremely high-throughput infrastructure
  • InfiniBand and Ethernet support across different ConnectX-7 variants
  • PCIe Gen 5 host connectivity
  • Hardware-accelerated RDMA/RoCE
  • Excellent fit for GPU-accelerated AI clusters
  • Support for GPUDirect RDMA and GPUDirect Storage
  • Advanced networking offloads reduce CPU processing overhead
  • SR-IOV support for virtualized environments
  • Advanced overlay networking acceleration
  • Hardware-assisted security acceleration
  • Low-latency communication for distributed applications
  • Flexible single-, dual-, and multi-port configurations
  • Available in multiple server-friendly form factors
  • Designed for AI, HPC, cloud, storage and hyperscale deployments
  • Supports advanced NVIDIA networking technologies and In-Network Computing

7. SEO Title

NVIDIA ConnectX-7 400Gb/s Smart Network Adapter – PCIe Gen5 InfiniBand & Ethernet RDMA NIC