Nvidia is gunning for everyone in the Ethernet switch market, with demand for its Spectrum-X offerings from data center operators has seen it set to go toe-to-toe with Cisco and Arista Networks.

IDC’s Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker revealed that the chip designer is turning aggressor in the Ethernet switch space, with third-quarter revenues in that segment soaring 167.7% year-over-year (YoY) to reach $1 billion

Nvidia is the newest entrant in the Ethernet data center segment, having long stood firmly on InfiniBand. But the launch of its Spectrum-X fabric has seen demand for Nvidia’s Ethernet networking technologies now “roughly on par with InfiniBand,” according to its recent earnings report.

IDC stats suggest the data center segment for the Ethernet switch market is exploding due to continued AI infrastructure buildouts, with Nvidia jumping from a standing start to capturing 11.6% of the DC market in short order.

Nvidia’s fast growth hasn’t deterred rival brands, with Arista recording 29.1% YoY growth and sitting on 19.2% DC market share.

Cisco, however, appears to be losing ground. While the networking giant still dominates the overall Ethernet switch market with 29.8% share and $4.4 billion in Q3 revenues, its data center segment grew just 16.9% YoY.

Cisco does remain an established leader with deep enterprise relationships and has made significant strides to meet the insatiable demand for technologies to power AI infrastructure.

Just this week, that demand helped the vendor break a nearly 30-year hoodoo as its stock price returned to pre-dot-com bubble levels not seen since March 2000. Cisco became an unwitting symbol of the dot-com delirium, with its stock having soared by around 600% in the two years prior to the bubble bursting.

But potentially making matters more challenging, 65.2% of Cisco's Ethernet switch revenues still come from the slower-growing, non-data center segment, enterprise campus, and branch networks that, according to the analyst firm, expanded just 8.2% YoY.

And the market incumbent looks to be keeping a close eye on those over its shoulders. CFO Mark Patterson this week said that Cisco has taken advantage of continued market uncertainty from Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Juniper Network integration.

“I think that as HPE and Juniper come together they have a lot of overlap and probably their best performing space, which is wireless, so that's causing, I think, a lot of confusion with customers and what's going to happen there, and we've certainly been able to, I think, capitalize on that,” Patterson said at the Barclays Technology, Media, Telecom (TMT) Conference earlier this week.

Commenting on the Ethernet switch report findings, Brandon Butler, a senior research manager with IDC's network infrastructure group, said: “The accelerated adoption of AI is underpinning significant expansion in the global Ethernet switch market, particularly within the data center segment, as hyperscalers, service providers, and enterprises expand network infrastructure to meet the demands of AI-driven workloads.

“Concurrently, the non-data center Ethernet switch market continues to grow as organizations increase investments in campus and branch networking capabilities, leveraging AI-enhanced management and automation tools to strengthen and modernize their network foundations," Butler added.