A consortium made up of technology companies including Arista Networks, Broadcom, Mellanox Technologies and the two giants Google and Microsoft have come together as the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium to improve data center networks.

The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium are looking to developed a specification that will allow large-scale data centers to run over a 25Gbps and 50Gbps Ethernet link protocol.

The 25 Gigabit Consortium said it formed to support an industry-standard, interoperable Ethernet specification that boosts the performance and slashes the interconnect cost per Gbps between the server Network Interface Controller and Top-of-Rack switch.

The specification adopted by the consortium prescribes a single-lane 25 Gbps Ethernet and dual-lane 50 Gbps Ethernet link protocol, enabling up to 2.5X higher performance per physical lane or twinax copper wire between the rack endpoint and switch compared to current 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps Ethernet links.

The consortium said the new specification is available royalty-free to any data center ecosystem vendor or consumer who joins it.

By deploying 25 and 50 Gbps Ethernet in their networks, the consortium said builders of mega-scale data centers such as Microsoft expect to achieve operational advantages, including reduced CAPEX and OPEX.

Microsoft engineer Yousef Khalidi said the new Ethernet speeds proposed by the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium gives superior flexibility in matching future workloads with network equipment and cabling, with the option to scale-as-you-go.

“In essence, the specification published by the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium maximizes the radix and bandwidth flexibility of the data center network while leveraging many of the same fundamental technologies and behaviors already defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard," Khalidi said.

The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium said it expects to rollout the 25 Gbps and 50 Gbps Ethernet compliant implementations over the next 12 to 18 months through the participation of multiple semiconductor, networking equipment and interconnect vendors in the consortium.