Broadcom Debuts Ethernet Switching Silicon for 100 Tbps Systems

Staff

15 years ago

Broadcom introduced its BCM88600 series Ethernet switching silicon designed for modular switching platforms with capacity ranging from 100 Gbps to 100 Tbps. The BCM88600 series integrates the features and functionality of an entire high-performance line card into a single chip, thus enabling a new generation of ultra high bandwidth networking solutions. The new silicon integrates switch fabric technology from Dune Networks (acquired by Broadcom in December 2009) into the Broadcom product portfolio.

The BCM88600 series can be used to build a variety of network switch solutions, from small fixed configurations to large standalone modular chassis-based solutions. Multiple chassis of different sizes can be seamlessly interconnected via a two-stage fabric element organization (e.g. FE600), delivering more than 10,000 wire-speed ports of 10GbE or 40GbE/100GbE equivalent.

Significantly, Broadcom’s BCM88600 can process a single stream of 100GbE at Layer 2-Layer 4 with integrated traffic management capabilities. Broadcom plans to offer several variations for specific applications, including data centers, enterprise, optical transport networks (OTNs), routers and other service provider systems.
http://www.broadcom.com

In December 2009, Broadcom acquired Dune Networks, a privately-held developer of switch fabric solutions for data center networking equipment, for approximately $178 million in cash.

Dune Networks, which was based in Yakum, Israel, developed a scalable chipset that supports bandwidth speeds of up to 100Gbps per port and can connect more than ten thousand servers (ports) in a single deployment. Its SAND chip-set includes a family of Fabric Element (FE) devices and a family of line-card devices named Fabric Access Processor (FAP) devices. Target applications include Carrier Core and Edge Router Platforms, Carrier Ethernet Switching Platforms, Carrier next generation Packet Transport Platforms, Enterprise Ethernet Switches and Routers and data center switching platforms.