Date: 25/05/2009

Broadcom's new Ethernet switch chips for designing cloud computing capable networks

Broadcom has launched three semiconductor devices and the necessary software for developing switch fabric for Ethernet switches for data center, enterprise and service provider networks with the capability to support cloud computing. The solution is named as XGS Core fabric architecture. These products are aimed at replacing FPGA/ASIC based systems with these standard IC based modular Ethernet platforms of 1 Terabit per line card and support up to 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) speeds.

The three new semiconductor devices are:

Traffic manager and fabric interface (BCM88200 series):
BCM88200 support up to 80 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of full duplex bandwidth per device to design high density, wire speed 10 GbE and 40 GbE line cards in modular systems.
The other key features of BCM88200 series are,
Provides deep packet buffering using standard, low cost DDR3 DRAM memory for a substantial cost savings over specialized memories traditionally used for packet buffering
Integrates serializer/deserialzer (SerDes) technology for fabric connectivity that runs up to 6.56 Gbps per link.


Scalable switch fabric (BCM88100 series):
BCM88100 series support 1.2 Terabits per second (Tbps) bandwidth per device and can scale to over 20 Tbps of overall fabric capacity.
The other key features of BCM88100 series are,
Integrates built-in scheduling support for 40 GbE and 100 GbE flows
Provides a bufferless crossbar fabric that dissipates substantially less power than traditional buffered crossbars
Supports hardware-based fault detection and failover that is more than one thousand times faster than traditional approaches.


High density buffer manager (BCM56900 series):
BCM56900 series support up to 80 Gbps of full duplex bandwidth and offers eight high speed HiGig interfaces and low cost external DRAM for deep buffering.



The XGS Core fabric architecture is also offered with a flexible virtual reference platform enabling customers to develop a 'virtual' chassis identical to their actual system. The reference systems include software, schematics, layout files and related documentation.


The Broadcom BCM88100 switch fabric is now available in production volumes. BCM88200 series and BCM56900 series are available in sample numbers.