Broadcom Debuts Gigahertz Quad-Core Broadband Processor

Broadcom introduced a new family of high performance, low power, integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors targeted at data networking and communications applications, as well as security, storage, 3G wireless infrastructure, and high-density computing applications. The new devices integrate up to four 64-bit MIPS central processing unit (CPU) cores onto a single die and are software compatible with Broadcom’s existing dual-core and single-core broadband processors. Performance gains for the new processors include up to 10,000 Dhrystone MIPS , 32 billion floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS), 20 million packets per second of L3 forwarding performance, 100 Gbps memory bandwidth, and up to 145 Gbps I/O bandwidth. Networking applications could include routing and switching engines and blade servers for data centers; multi-function (e.g. intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, anti-virus firewall, VPN) security appliances and/or chassis-based service blades; multi-protocol SAN switches, network attached storage (NAS) filers, and RAID arrays; and wireless infrastructure equipment such as radio network controllers (RNCs) and GPRS service and gateway nodes. http://www.broadcom.com