The chart represents data rates on a vertical log scale, with an optical fiber on the left and a server on the right. Movement from left to right traces the path data must take through the components from a fiber to a server. Network stacks are limited both by network interface cards and system software to 10-100 gigabits per second. This bottleneck is especially important for distributed computation that requires significant communication between the computation nodes. FastNICs seeks to speed up applications, such as the distributed training of machine learning classifiers, by 100x through the development, implementation, integration, and validation of novel, clean-slate network subsystems.
