by Broadcom's new Tomahawk Ethernet chips offer super speed, switch-level packet flow analytics and dynamic policy control to enhance cloud network performance, but they've got plenty of competition.
The new StrataXGS Tomahawk chips ratchet up the already heated competition in the network switch chip market, which barely even existed a few years ago when network hardware vendors simply used proprietary ASICs.
In recent weeks Cavium, unveiled its Xpliant switch chips, which upped the ante on both throughput and chip programmability. Meanwhile, this year Intel has reworked its x86 processors to handle virtual network loads and developed new Ethernet switch silicon.
The network switching race is centered on both speed a new level of programmability that supports automation and dynamic provisioning in cloud networks. Broadcom was the first merchant silicon provider to address both of these needs with its Trident II chips, which can now be found in many large enterprise data center network switches.
The new Tomahawk Ethernet switch chips are not meant to replace the Trident II chips. Instead they aim for the cloud with higher throughput that both matches Cavium’s Xpliant chips and far surpasses the Trident II.
The new chips deliver up to 3.2 Tbps of switching capacity and are the first to enable 25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connectivity at every port. Tomahawk chips can support switches with 32 ports of 100 GbE, 64 ports of 40 or 50GbE or 128 ports of 25 Gbe. Broadcom is part of a consortium of vendors developing 25 and 50 GbE technology and pushing the IEEE to consider new Ethernet standards.
"Today, if you look at top-of-rack switches based on 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet, we’ve maxed out front panel density on a 1U switch. You can get between 32 and 36 QSFP ports in the front panel of a 1U switch, so if we stick with 10 gigabit data planes, we are stuck," said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group. “Broadcom is enabling you to move each lane port from 10 gigabits per lane to 25 gigabits per lane, which is 2.5 times the bandwidth out of that same 1U switch."
Source: http://searchsdn.techtarget.com
