News

Broadcom First With 6.4Tbps Tomahawk II 64-Port 100GE Switch

A lot of us have Broadcom parts in one or more of our systems, but this news isn’t for consumers. Broadcom Limited announced the availability of its new family of switches optimized for cloud-scale data centers deploying high-density 100G switching solutions.

Building on the widely deployed StrataXGS Tomahawk and Trident switch products, the new StrataXGS Tomahawk II Switch Series is the highest performance Ethernet switch available today. It supports up to 64 ports with 100GE, (or 128 ports with 50GE) with SDN-optimized packet switch engines operating at 6.4 Terabits per second. That’s a lot of speed.

Compared to the Tomahawk, the StrataXGS Tomahawk II offers increased bandwidth capacity, scalability, and cost efficiency for mega data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Manufactured in 16nm, Tomahawk II integrates 256 serdes running at over 25 Gbps, with large on-chip forwarding tables and packet buffer memory. With next generation BroadView instrumentation and control capabilities, Tomahawk II provides enhanced traffic load balancing, network visibility and control of traffic provisioning. Tomahawk II’s proven architecture and comprehensive feature-set will enable partners to develop and deploy solutions more quickly, accelerating the transition to high-density 100GE interconnect.

With next generation BroadView instrumentation and control capabilities, Tomahawk II provides enhanced traffic load balancing, network visibility, and control of traffic provisioning. Tomahawk II’s proven architecture and comprehensive feature-set will enable partners to develop and deploy solutions more quickly, accelerating the transition to high-density 100GE interconnect.

While this doesn’t affect us as users directly, it’s always great to see advanced at the backbone level of our technology. After all, it where all our beloved services and connections originate from and centralize. And the Tomahawk II surely is an impressive one.

“Our StrataXGS Tomahawk II comes just two years after Tomahawk with twice the bandwidth and resource capacity. We expect this to accelerate 100G adoption in the next wave of data centers, while delivering network scale and visibility for public/private cloud computing, storage, and HPC fabrics,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. “Tomahawk II will leverage the 25G/100G infrastructure established with the highly successful Tomahawk line.”

“The growth of data consumption has driven the need for greater bandwidth network solutions now emerging at 100G,” said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group. “The Broadcom Tomahawk II contains a rich feature set for switch deployments at 25GE, 50GE, and 100GE that will improve both the economics and performance of cloud-scale networks. Broadcom has a strong cadence of switch generations and the leading third-party ecosystem around its silicon, which should deliver a fast time to market for solutions based on Tomahawk II.”

StrataXGS Tomahawk II Key Features