Celestica Launches DS6000-Series 1.6TbE AI Switches
Per a Globe Newswire release distributed via Montreal Gazette, Celestica announced the DS6000-series 1.6TbE switches are now available to order for initial customers. The platform is offered in two form factors-an air-cooled 3RU for 19-inch racks and a hybrid-cooled 2OU for 21-inch OCP ORv3 environments-and is built on Broadcom Tomahawk 6 (TH6) silicon. The company states the series delivers up to 102.4 Tbps of non-blocking switching capacity and provides 64 ports of 1.6TbE (OSFP224) connectivity, supporting industry standards from the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) and Open Compute Project (OCP). Gavin Cato, SVP & GM, AI Platform Engineering at Celestica, is quoted on the move to 1.6TbE networking. The release frames the product as infrastructure targeted at large-scale generative AI and machine-learning clusters.
What happened
Per the Globe Newswire release via Montreal Gazette, Celestica announced that its DS6000-series 1.6TbE switches are now available to order for initial customers. Per the same release, the platform is offered in two form factors: an air-cooled 3RU for standard 19-inch racks and a hybrid-cooled 2OU for 21-inch OCP ORv3 environments. The announcement attributes the design to Broadcom Tomahawk 6 (TH6) silicon and reports up to 102.4 Tbps of non-blocking switching capacity and 64 ports of 1.6TbE (OSFP224) connectivity.
Technical details
Per the Globe Newswire release, the DS6000-series supports both high-speed copper and 1.6TbE optical interconnects and is built to align with standards from the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) and the Open Compute Project (OCP) Ethernet Scale-up Network (ESUN) specification. The release highlights SONiC compatibility for open-networking flexibility. The quoted capacity and port density are presented as engineering targets intended for high-bandwidth AI back-end networks.
Industry context
Editorial analysis: High-density 1.6TbE switching represents the next step in a recurring pattern where hyperscale and AI-specialized fabrics push spine and leaf bandwidth to reduce oversubscription during large-model training. Vendors integrating TH6 class silicon plus open-networking software such as SONiC are following a common trajectory that prioritizes port density, thermal options for different rack architectures, and interoperability with OCP-led specifications.
What to watch
Editorial analysis: Observers should track customer deployments and interoperability tests against OCP/UEC implementations, real-world power and thermal performance for the hybrid-cooled 2OU form factor, and the ecosystem for 1.6TbE optics and OSFP224 transceivers. Metrics to monitor include achieved throughput in scale-out training jobs, fabric oversubscription rates, and vendor support for SONiC feature parity.
"The move to 1.6TbE networking represents a monumental leap in data center evolution, and our engineering teams have worked tirelessly to ensure the DS6000-series is the definitive choice for the AI era," said Gavin Cato, SVP & GM, AI Platform Engineering, Celestica. The release does not include timeframes for broader availability beyond initial customers.
Scoring Rationale
This product availability is a notable infrastructure development for AI-scale networking because it delivers high-density 1.6TbE capacity and form-factor flexibility. It is not a paradigm shift, but it matters to practitioners designing large training fabrics and procurement teams.
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