Alibaba’s T-Head Unveils 400G SmartNIC “Panmai 920” with Built-in PCIe Switch

Alibaba’s T-Head launched the Panmai 920, reportedly China’s first 400G SmartNIC with an integrated PCIe switch.

The card is already in mass production and is being deployed in Alibaba Cloud data centers for AI workloads.

It is designed to ease a key networking bottleneck for large-model training and inference by boosting throughput and cutting latency.

The product also aims to improve connectivity across GPUs, SSDs, and RDMA paths while lowering infrastructure costs.