Broadcom Announces World’s First Automotive IEEE 802.3ch Multigigabit PHYs and Multilayer Switches with MACsec Support

Industry leading automotive Ethernet PHYs and switches fortify connected cars with advanced security, high bandwidth connectivity, and time-sensitive networking

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) today announced the availability of its automotive AEC-Q100 compliant multigigabit Ethernet PHY transceiver family and multilayer Ethernet switch family with 802.1AE MACsec support, the BCM8989X and BCM8957X, respectively. The BCM8989X is the industry’s first IEEE 802.3ch standard compliant automotive 10G/5G/2.5GBASE-T1 MACsec PHY, while the BCM8957X is the first automotive L2/L3 switch with MACsec support and PHY interfaces supporting data rates of 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Both device families are designed to address the growing need of in-vehicle data security, high bandwidth networking with flexible multigigabit interfaces, and time-sensitive networking (TSN).

With Ethernet being the de-facto networking standard for automotive applications, MACsec has become an important solution to help secure data communications between Ethernet nodes in a car and guard against cyber attacks and data breaches. Leveraging Broadcom’s proven MACsec technology from high-speed networking products, the BCM8989X and BCM8957X are equipped with state-of-the-art MACsec that can be configured to support high-speed interconnects for in-vehicle networking. In addition, these devices come with built-in BroadR-Secure functionality to further enhance data transmission security by enabling customers to authenticate each packet using secure keys.

As new technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) make inroads into the automotive industry, the amount of data transmitted both inside and outside of the connected car is expected to increase substantially. High bandwidth networking will be needed to enable a growing number of sensors and high-resolution cameras for autonomous driving. Equally important, low latency or real time communications will play a key role in addressing time-sensitive applications like safety-critical vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. As such, multigigabit Ethernet PHYs and high bandwidth multilayer switches are essential in handling the increased data traffic while being able to securely transfer large amounts of critical data across the network for accurate real time decision making.