NVIDIA MMS1X00-N5400 QSFP112 1310NM 400Gbps Optic Quick Look

Today we are taking a quick look at the NVIDIA MMS1X00-N5400 QSFP112 1310NM 400Gbps modules. We bought these to connect two NVIDIA GB300 AI Station systems to an NVIDIA Spectrum-X switch.

Since we had them, we figured we would at least show you what they are and why they matter. Folks liked seeing the massive NVIDIA 800G OSFP to 2x 400G QSFP112 DAC cable so we figured why not show these. NVIDIA MMS1X00-N5400 QSFP112 1310NM 400Gbps Optic Hardware The module is a QSFP112 form factor. We went into the QSFP Versus QSFP-DD Key Differences if you want to learn a bit more about this module, versus some of the ones we have looked at previously. A super quick decode here: QSFP means we have a quad-channel module, and the 112 tells us we have 112G PAM4 signaling. That means we get a standard pluggable form factor that is more compact than the OSFP form factor we see often at 800Gbps and 1.6Tbps these days. The connector is an MPO-12. As you may have surmised at this point, this is a 4x 112G design, so we are only using eight of the twelve fibers. Something else neat is that NVIDIA adds small heatsinks to these modules outside the pluggable cage. Often 400Gbps ports have cooling internally on the device’s cages. Here though, NVIDIA is using a small heatsink on the outside of the device so they stick out a bit from the NIC and switch. The connector here is important since it is QSFP112, not QSFP56-DD. If you saw our recent Cheap Desktop 400GbE Switch MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-hRM Review, that uses lower-cost PAM4 56Gbps lanes, so it needs eight lanes to achieve 400Gbps. As a result, QSFP56-DD is a different connector from QSFP112 because it needs eight channels instead of four back to the device. We tend to run a lot of DR4/ LR4 optics, so the advantage here is that, unlike using a QSFP56-DD module, we do not need a gearbox in the module to connect a 400Gbps 500m DR4 link from our switch.