Broadcom Ships Tomahawk 4, Industry’s Highest Bandwidth Ethernet Switch Chip at 25.6 Terabits per Second

World’s First 64 x 400GbE / 256 x 100GbE Switching Silicon Enables Next Wave of Hyperscale Cloud Build-Out for Machine Learning and Storage Disaggregation

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 09, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) announced today that it has delivered the StrataXGS Tomahawk 4 switch series, demonstrating an unprecedented 25.6 Terabits/sec of Ethernet switching performance in a single device— double the bandwidth of any other switch silicon available in the market today.

Delivered in less than two years after the previous 12.8Tbps product generation, Tomahawk 4 is implemented in 7nm technology with 512 50G PAM4 SerDes.  Tomahawk 4’s high level of integration and highly efficient architecture delivers up to 75 percent lower power and cost compared to alternative solutions.

The growth of hyperscale cloud networks continues its unrelenting upward trend, with bandwidth increasing by 25 percent and storage by 36 percent year-over-year^[1].  Workloads for deep learning, using massively distributed neural networks and alternative computing nodes, require a dramatic increase in bandwidth with dense 100/200/400GbE links spanning high-radix, ultra-low-latency network topologies.

The continued trend towards disaggregated, high-density flash storage is concurrently demanding step functions in network throughput and reduced end-to-end access times. With its market-leading switching performance, high 100/200/400GbE port density, and rich feature set optimized for cloud use cases, Broadcom’s Tomahawk 4 is ideally suited to serve as the backbone for the next generation of hyperscale data center networks.

“The Tomahawk franchise is the flagship for cutting-edge, single-chip performance and integration among Broadcom’s multi-vectored Ethernet switch silicon portfolio, tailored to the unique and rigorous demands of hyperscale data center operators,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. “We are proud of our world-class engineering team for innovating and delivering the 25.6Tbps Tomahawk 4 chip in less than two years after we released Tomahawk 3.  Broadcom is proving yet again that customers can rely on us to lead the industry on switch silicon performance and execution at every generation.”