$Amazon(AMZN.US) AWS is not trying to beat Nvidia, AMD, or Google. Much of the networking hardware is off-the-shelf, so there may be no need to pay a premium for custom parts. Is networking really cheaper?
At first glance on a per-card networking cost basis, AWS's approach works: the rack form factor mirrors GB300, yet per-card networking cost is lower. The savings are mostly in optics: Trn3 uses AECs to reach the top-of-rack (ToR) switch, and optics are only used beyond the ToR.
On an equal-compute basis, however, Trn3's networking is not particularly cost-efficient and lacks competitiveness.
Based on the chart, Trn3's networking costs about $1,800 per PFLOPS of FP8 compute. That is the highest among the six comparison setups.
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