Date: 22/03/2010

64-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Ethernet Switch for data centers

Broadcom has made available a new BCM56840 series Ethernet Switch with 64-ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and also flexible to support 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE).

The new Broadcom BCM56840 Series designed to make cost saving network switch for cloud computing applications. This 40 nanometer device offer the option of 64-ports of 10GbE or 16-ports of 40GbE connectivity, integrated SerDes, and scalable services. The BCM56840 series supports Layer 2 / Layer 3 (L2 / L3) switching with dynamic access control lists (ACLs).

The other features include
Supports the Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) IEEE P802.3az draft standard.
Offers lowest latency 640 Gbps Ethernet switch.
Provides virtualization support and visibility to individual virtual machines in the network allowing security, access control and quality-of-service (QoS) policies to be tied to virtual machines. This is critical to enable the large scale deployment of server virtualization and mobility of workloads.
Data Center Bridging (DCB) - unifies storage and networking under one technology with lossless Ethernet.
Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) - converges storage over Ethernet networks enabling a reduction in server input/output (I/O), cabling and power.
Provides high utilization multi-pathing via Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links (TRILL) simplifying network topologies while increasing network resiliency and scalability.