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| Broadcom Unveils New StrataXGS 4 Switching Architecture Broadcom has announced the StrataXGS 4 - the company's next generation family of single-chip 65nm switches. This new product family enables OEMs to build single high-density systems that meet the cost, power, performance and scalability requirements of service provider, data center and enterprise markets using a merchant silicon solution. Broadcom's 4th generation StrataXGS architecture utilizes a low power, 65nm CMOS process technology to enable the scalability necessary for data center 3.0 applications, the security required for enterprise networks, as well as the protocols and quality of service (QoS) needed to implement next generation service provider networks. As today's network continues to evolve, bandwidth requirements for service providers and data centers are growing at an unprecedented rate. Traditionally, equipment manufacturers have relied on custom application specific ICs (ASICs) or field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for their high- end networking products in these markets. This approach, however, has high development and product costs, a lengthy time-to-market, and results in a product that consumes too much power and is difficult to manage. Legacy networking technologies are being phased out in favor of a converged Ethernet-based virtualized network, and as a result, system providers are now confronted with new demands and challenges. New equipment must be developed and brought to market quickly with dramatically reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and must retain support for critical and intricate protocols, as well as maintain high availability (HA) and advanced QoS. Broadcom is the first silicon provider to effectively address these requirements in a single high performance platform that reduces development costs and time-to-market; an accomplishment that can help to facilitate the industry transition from custom ASICs to merchant silicon. Announced is the Broadcom StrataXGS 4 multi-layer switch family in 65nm that includes two new products: the BCM56624 and BCM56720. A third product, the BCM56820 was announced in November 2007 and completes the product family. StrataXGS 4 products offer a new solution to OEMs designing modular, stackable and fixed form factor equipment for the service provider, data center, and enterprise markets. Using a platform approach for design flexibility, StrataXGS 4 products allow OEMs to meet the requirements of on-demand networks including the seamless migration of servers and storage subsystems across the data center, while eliminating the cost of deploying and maintaining separate, disparate fabrics such as Fibre Channel, InfiniBand and others. For service providers, the StrataXGS 4 architecture facilitates a converged network by collapsing voice, video and data onto a single IP backbone that supports both wired and wireless connectivity. The Broadcom BCM56624 is a 48-port Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) plus 4-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) solution that is the most scalable, feature rich 48+4 GbE switch available today. The new 65nm chip provides carrier-class features such as IPv4 and IPv6 routing, as well as advanced metro encapsulation protocols and advanced security mechanisms such as IPFix and large access control lists (ACLs) for user and flow-based authentication. The BCM56624 also includes advanced QoS features for service provider applications with a new dynamic adaptive memory buffer technology that provides better QoS and network performance. It also features large external address and security tables that scale to meet the demands of high performance equipment at the core of the network. The BCM56720 is a 4th generation StrataXGS HiGig switch fabric, also designed in 65nm, that provides half a terabit of packet switching capacity on a single chip and scales to achieve multi-terabits of capacity on a single backplane. It is compatible with the new StrataXGS 4 series of products as well as products from earlier StrataXGS architectures. This switch fabric also raises the bar for stacking capability using the company's HiGig stacking protocol and service aware flow control (SAFC) to provide OEMs with the industry's highest performance stackable solution. Broadcom's SAFC technology is a key feature in all StrataXGS 4 products that makes it possible to build converged networks. SAFC provides reliable delivery of latency sensitive network traffic, such as storage, and extends priority access to time-critical applications including clustering, voice and video. Data center traffic can now be converged onto a single unified network fabric eliminating the need for separate networks, and results in a data center that is smaller, consumes less power and is easier to manage and cool. Announced in November 2007, the BCM56820 is a 24-port, multi-layer 10GbE switch solution for the data center and other high performance applications. Also designed in 65nm, the BCM56820 offers significant per port power savings over previous generation 10GbE switch products, providing greater density at a lower power. This enables cooler operations for a 'green' data center, scalability for social networking and online gaming, reliability for enterprise applications and QoS for streaming video. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Networking News :: home page |