Seems odd that MS and G are the ones using special hardware, but only reach to 24 and 16 gbps respectively, while AWS hits 100 gbps networking. Is AWS already using specialized HW as well?
I'd guess the bespoke hw is not necessarily faster signaling, but rather functionality. E.g. fast multipath routing in a Clos fabric, firewalling, maybe offloading some specific workload (IIRC ms was using fpgas to offload some aspect of search for Bing)
Going back to signaling, AFAIU the state of the art is 25 Gb/s per lane, 100 Gb networking aggregates 4 of those. 50 Gb/s is still in the labs.
