Nokia further deepened its data center efforts, unveiling a family of data center switches that the vendor claims will boost performance supporting AI workloads.

The 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR)-H6 series offers up to 102.4 Tb/s of throughput across interface speeds at 800 Gb/s and 1.6 Tb/s.

The Finnish firm claims its new switches offer improved network performance, with built-in features designed to optimize packet flow. Available in both liquid-cooled and air-cooled variants, the switches are Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) compliant, meaning they come with its congestion control model, allowing them to intuitively manage packet flows.

“The 1.6 TE interface speeds on Nokia’s new family of 7220 IXR switches hit a sweet spot in the market as agentic AI compels a change in data center networking requirements,” Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group, noted in a statement.

In the wake of former Intel data center lead Justin Hotard replacing Pekka Lundmark as CEO, Nokia has pushed even deeper into the market, looking to take advantage of the AI infrastructure boom.

The past few months alone have seen the vendor deepen ties with Nvidia – including a $1 billion investment from the chip giant – along with a major deal with Nscale to provide the ambitious data center at the center of OpenAI’s Stargate buildout in Europe with networking technologies.

Its IXR-H6 switches add to its growing networking portfolio, following on from October additions that included a tool to create a digital twin of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks and AI-powered applications capable of identifying faults in fiber links.

The new offerings support embedded Network Operating System (NOS) and SONiC. The switches can also be configured with Nokia’s SR Linux network operating system (NOS) to provide operators with more choice to suit their deployment needs.

In addition to the IXR-H6’s own congestion control capabilities, Nokia has added agentic AI to its event-driven automation (EDA) platform. The addition of AIOps allows network operators to employ the platform to scan telemetry in real-time to address potential downtimes.

Vach Kompella, SVP and GM of Nokia’s IP networks business, said: “The astonishing growth in AI adoption has led to a dramatic overhaul in how data centers operate, and is driving constant evolution in hardware and operational tools.”

Kompella added that the addition of agentic AI will support “highly reliable network operations at the speed required to keep up with the pace of change.”