Nokia announced a big update to its data center networking portfolio to meet the rising demands of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The company launched the new 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) family of high-performance switches and introduced new advanced AI-driven automation tools to its Event-Driven Automation (EDA) platform. Such improvements allow data centers to support the large-scale data throughput needed to train and infer AI, and can also optimize efficiency and availability by having smarter automation.
AI Data Center Performance
The Nokia 7220 IXR-H6 switches can support a maximum traffic rate of 102.4 terabits each second. They come with 800 gigabit and 1.6 terabit Ethernet ports, which are twice the previous ones. The switches follow Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) standards to manage congestion and optimize data flows. This is important for very large AI systems, sometimes called “AI factories”, which may include more than one million AI processing units. The IXR-H6 family offers flexible cooling options, too. The switches come in liquid-cooled or air-cooled versions, and they fit multiple rack types. Nokia is also the only vendor that lets customers choose between its own SR Linux network operating system or the open-source SONiC system on the same hardware.
Automation and Reliability
Nokia has also improved its EDA management platform with new AI-powered features. These features use natural language processing and reasoning tools to detect network issues and find root causes much faster. The system combines live telemetry data with a digital twin model. This lets operators test changes safely before applying them, and roll back instantly if needed. The result is that issues can be fixed more quickly and with confidence. According to a study by Bell Labs Consulting and Futurum, data centers using Nokia’s AIOps saw up to a 96% reduction in network downtime.
Nokia says the rapid growth of AI has led to a major overhaul in how data centers operate. The new high-speed switches and smarter automation are seen as key steps to prepare networks for the AI “super-cycle” of rapid growth. In short, Nokia aims to meet the two main challenges of the AI era – scaling up data center network capacity and keeping operations reliable with intelligent automation.
