Broadcom Limited (NASDAQ:AVGO), today announced immediate 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, supporting up to 64 ports 100GE or 128 ports of 50GE with SDN-optimized packet switch engines operating at 6.4 Terabits per second.

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.

StrataXGS Tomahawk II Key Features

• 6.4 Tbps Multilayer L2/L3/MPLS Ethernet switching
• Support for 64 ports 100GE, or 128 ports 40GE/50GE
• 256 x 25Gbps SERDES
• Low Latency StrataXGS Pipeline Architecture
• FleXGS flow processing with flexible match/action capabilities
• Dynamic Flow Distribution for large scale Layer3/ECMP networks
• Increased On-Chip Forwarding Databases
• Higher Capacity Embedded Packet Buffer Memory
• Enhanced BroadView network telemetry features
• Comprehensive overlay and tunneling support including VXLAN, NVGRE, MPLS, SPB
• Advanced OpenFlow support using Broadcom OF-DPA™

"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."

Availability                                                                    

The Broadcom StrataXGS BCM56970 Tomahawk II Switch Series is now sampling.