Phoronix: Nebula Matrix Network Driver Queued Ahead Of Linux 7.4
Points:
There is also a cheaper 10/25GbE NIC option, also with PCIe4:
BTW, these guys also offer DPUs…
Could these SmartNICs become new go-to option for advanced users, homelabbers etc?
I’m very sure the prices will be very competitive. But the real question is what are the reasons that people need more than 1Gbps at home other than “I just want it”.
I do think it’s great news for people wanting 25Gbps or above.
The same reasons that have people going for M.2 NvME sticks instead of HDDs or SATA SSDs.
People often want data security on a dedicated machine and they access it from clients.
With 100GbE, one can have its precious data on a server with RAID or ZFS etc, which can tolerate failure of single drive (or more) and access it without network at full speed as if it was local.
I’m sure there are plenty of other uses, too, like AI etc.
For those that see that as an overkill, there is cheaper 25GbE model.
Also, BIG difference SRT 10G stuff is RDMA+PFC+ECN.
RDMA means that data is copied directly to RAM for an application to use directly without CPU involvement. This means that even high traffic doesn’t interrupt the CPU.
PFC and ECN mean that data congestion is largely gone - neither switch nor target machines drop the data off the cable simply for being overwhelmed by the sender.
This is another BIG deal, for latency (no retransmissions), bandwidth and CPU usage.
A bit of a hiccup here. I’m actually in the market for something like this. I would want 10 of them. I tried to look it up though and it looks like there isn’t actually any way for a person to purchase these. They’re only sold business to business. I also couldn’t find a price, even if I could purchase them. If they can do dual port 100G and they are dirt cheap (ish), that would be absolutely amazing, but it doesn’t look like you can actually obtain these right now. Connect X4, Connect X5 dual 100GB adapters on eBay go for $300-$400? And those have reasonably well-maintained drivers. They’re not exactly on NVIDIA’s priority list, but the driver still supports them. I don’t know, I’m more than willing to give the Chinese tech a go especially during the 2026 chip-pocalypse, but no one seems willing to sell it to me. 