Fall 2026 Seminar Series

Time: Friday, Oct. 2 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM      Location: MKB 622

From Parameters to Packets: A Field Guide to the Network Infrastructure Powering AI

Abstract:

Everyone's talking about AI. Few are talking about what makes it work.

Behind every GPU cluster and every AI breakthrough is a network — purpose-built, precision-engineered, and almost entirely absent from the conversation. In this session, Louie Mattucci draws on more than twenty years of network engineering and his role as AI Tech Lead at Arista Networks to deliver an engineer's survey of the technologies essential to AI's future.

From scale-up, scale-out, and scale-across architectures to rail-optimized and multi-planar fabric designs, this talk maps the infrastructure landscape that determines whether AI workloads thrive or stall. Topics include RoCEv2, Ultra Ethernet (UEC), Multipath Reliable Connectivity (MRC), the CPO vs. LPO vs. XPO optics debate, liquid cooling, and the shifting dynamics of the XPU and NIC markets.

Whether you're a computer science student, a business leader evaluating AI investments, or an engineer curious about what's under the hood — this is a grounded, jargon-translated tour of the infrastructure that makes artificial intelligence real.

Bio:

Louie Mattucci is a Systems Engineering Team Lead and AI Tech Lead at Arista Networks, where he helps organizations design secure and scalable infrastructure for AI and modern data center workloads. With more than twenty years of experience spanning network security, operations, engineering, and architecture, Louie has partnered with startups, enterprises, and public-sector organizations to translate technical complexity into measurable business value.

A hands-on leader and lifelong learner, Louie works at the intersection of automation, AI, and network infrastructure — explaining the gap between what's emerging and what's practical. He holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, along with CISSP and Arista ACE certifications.

Louie lives near Columbus, Ohio. When he's not tinkering with technology, he's probably researching the next thing, hiking in the woods, or watching his son play basketball.