Oracle enhances cloud networking with acceleron update

Oracle has announced a set of new networking capabilities within Oracle Acceleron, the networking software and architectural suite of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). These updates are aimed at improving performance and reducing costs for running various workloads in the cloud. Built on more than a decade of cloud networking development, Oracle Acceleron is designed to optimise data flow within the cloud, offering a secure, high-performance infrastructure at reduced operational cost. 

Oracle Acceleron integrates dedicated network fabrics, direct data pathways, and a converged network interface card (NIC) to enhance performance and reduce cost. It also features host-level zero-trust routing and multi-planar network designs to improve security and resilience. The underlying software architecture simplifies and unifies complex network, storage, and security functions into a programmable, consistent layer that can operate across a range of hardware platforms.

Key benefits for customers include line-rate encryption throughput, ultra-low latency, up to double the network processing capacity, up to twice the storage IOPS, and resilient, intent-driven security policies enforced directly at the host level. These capabilities are designed to serve a wide range of OCI users, from global web applications to large-scale AI workloads.

Clay Magouyrk, CEO of Oracle, commented,“Our customers want cloud infrastructure that enables them to innovate quickly, operate efficiently, and scale reliably. Oracle has led the way in foundational cloud networking innovation for over a decade, and these new enhancements to Oracle Acceleron deliver the performance, scalability, and security required for today’s cloud workloads.”

Key enhancements in Oracle acceleron

Fabric Network Architecture

• Dedicated Fabric Architecture: Designed to deliver consistent, low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity, even at scale. These purpose-built fabrics isolate network traffic, supporting advanced use cases such as Oracle Exadata, high-performance computing (HPC), and large AI/ML clusters by replacing traditional three-tier network structures.

• Multi-Planar Networking: Enhances network resilience by allowing customer NICs to connect to multiple, isolated network planes. In the event of an issue in one plane, traffic is automatically rerouted. This reduces throughput bottlenecks and tail latency, preventing job failures and delays.

Fabric Accelerator

• Disintermediated Routing: Reduces latency and variability by eliminating unnecessary network hops and intermediaries. Traffic takes a more direct path between host and destination, improving performance consistency and efficiency while strengthening security.

Host Network Accelerator

• Converged NIC: Partitions a SmartNIC into separate customer and provider planes, maintaining isolation while supporting storage acceleration (e.g., NVMe over TCP), line-rate encryption, and bare-metal NIC patching. This delivers up to 2x performance improvement without the complexity or cost of dual-NIC setups.

• Zero-Trust Packet Routing (ZPR): Enforces least-privilege access policies from the first packet, independent of network topology. New enhancements include private service access for sensitive endpoints and deny-based identity and access management (IAM) policies that block unauthorised traffic at the host level.

Ken Duda, President and CTO of Arista Networks, stated,“Arista has a long-standing collaboration with Oracle, and we’re pleased to continue advancing customer-focused innovation through Oracle Acceleron. As the industry prepares for the next wave of AI networking, Arista’s network platforms and software suites are well-positioned to support this evolution.”

Forrest Norrod, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Data Center Solutions Business Group at AMD, added,“AMD and Oracle share a strong commitment to high performance and robust cloud security. Since the launch of OCI with AMD Pensando DPUs, we’ve collaborated on delivering breakthrough capabilities. We look forward to continued innovation with the launch of converged NICs powered by AMD Pensando DPUs in Oracle Acceleron early next year.”