Broadcom claims world’s fastest single-chip Ethernet switch

Broadcom's BCM56840 series offers up to 64 ports of 10GbE or 16 ports of 40GbE

Broadcom has announced a new series of products that aim to bring the high-speed switches usually only seen in the most powerful datacentres to smaller enterprises.

The company said that the new BCM56840 series offers up to 64 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) or 16 ports of 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE). Such connectivity can now be deployed by medium-sized enterprises that could not normally afford such fast connections the company said.

“The new BCM56840 switch series sets the bar and delivers unprecedented levels of integration, reduced power consumption and ultimate performance,” said Martin Lund, general manager of Broadcom’s Network Switch business.

“This new level of functionality will allow our customers to build innovative products to create the datacentre of the future.”

The new switch series is built around 40nm process technology and has been designed to scale up to allow the expansion of datacentres. It has also been optimised for cloud computing network configurations.

Broadcom also claims the switch has the lowest power use and lowest latency at 640 Gbit/s of any Ethernet switch. It is now being installed with selected customers.

“The datacentre segment is an important growth area for our business,” said Henry Tso, chief technical officer of IP networking developer H3C.

“Broadcom’s latest series of high density 10GbE solutions enables us to meet the virtualisation and converged scalable services demands of our customers’ next generation energy efficient datacentre.”