Now Sampling to Customers, New StrataXGS® Tomahawk™ Series Delivers 3.2 Tbps Bandwidth with Comprehensive SDN Control and Visibility Features
Bangalore, India — September 25, 2014
News Highlights:
- First to deliver 32 ports of 100GE, 64 ports of 40GE/50GE or 128 ports of 25GE on a single chip
- Significantly improves efficiency of cloud-scale networks using high-density 25/50GE data center link protocols1
- In-field configurable flow processing and instrumentation engines enrich network control and visibility
- Leverages broad ecosystem of network software, hardware, OEM, operator and application partners
Broadcom Corporation, a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today announced the immediate availability of a new line of switches optimized for cloud-scale data centers. Building on its widely deployed StrataXGS® Trident and StrataDNX™ products, the new StrataXGS® Tomahawk™ Switch Series is the industry’s highest performance Ethernet switch, delivering 3.2 Terabits per second (Tbps) switching capacity, unparalleled port density and SDN-optimized engines in a single chip. For more news, visit Broadcom’s Newsroom.
With more than 7 Billion integrated transistors, the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series enables the transformation of next-generation cloud fabrics to all-25Gbps per-lane interconnect, increasing link performance by 2.5X2. With dense 100GE connectivity and authoritative support for new 25GE and 50GE protocol standards, the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series significantly bolsters the bandwidth capacity, scalability, and cost efficiency of today’s mega data centers and high performance computing (HPC) environments.
“Our StrataXGS Tomahawk Series will usher in the next wave of data centers running 25G and 100G Ethernet, while delivering the network visibility required to operate large-scale cloud computing, storage and HPC fabrics,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, Broadcom Executive Vice President, Infrastructure & Networking Group. “This is the culmination of a multi-year cooperative effort with our partners and customers to prepare for this transition. We are pleased to see significant industry investment in the Tomahawk 32x100GE form factor as well as the 25G/50G Ethernet specification, which Broadcom defined and co-founded as an industry standard.”
Transforming Leaf-Spine Networks to 25/100GE for Maximum Efficiency and Scale-Out
By deploying StrataXGS Tomahawk based switches, data center networks currently running 10GE at the top-of-rack (leaf) level and 40GE at the end-of-row (spine) level can upgrade to 25GE and 100GE interconnect, respectively, to accommodate growth in distributed server/storage workloads without increasing network equipment footprint or cabling complexity. A three-tier data center fabric of StrataXGS Tomahawk switches, using standard, compact, CAPEX-efficient form factors, can deliver over 15X higher network bandwidth capacity3.
In lieu of upgrading server-to-switch connections to 40GE, a StrataXGS Tomahawk based network driving 25GE to the server reduces cabling elements within the rack by as much as 75 percent, while quadrupling the number of server and storage nodes that can be interconnected in a leaf-spine topology4. This dual-pronged improvement in bandwidth efficiency and port density compared to existing 40GE solutions gives modern data centers unprecedented ability to scale out their networks and achieve significant return on investment.
Comprehensive Visibility and Control for Software-Defined Data Centers
Optimized for Software Defined Network (SDN) application ecosystems, Broadcom’s new BroadView™ instrumentation feature set enables data center operators to have full visibility of network and switch-level analytics. With extensive application flow and debug statistics, link health and utilization monitors, streaming network congestion detection and packet tracing capabilities, the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series provides operators the telemetry to troubleshoot large-scale networks, apply controls for optimal performance, respond to potential problems before they happen and drive down OPEX.
Featuring new FleXGS™ packet processing engines, the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series enables operators to adapt to changing workloads and control their networks, with an extensive suite of user configurable functions for flow processing, security, network virtualization, measurement/monitoring, congestion management and traffic engineering. Among other benefits, FleXGS engines provide in-field configurable forwarding and classification database profiles, more than 12X greater application policy scale compared to previous generation switches, increased flexibility of packet lookups and key generation, and rich load balancing and traffic redirection controls. All these configurable capabilities are accessible to the network control plane via industry-proven software APIs and come without sacrificing network data plane throughput or latency.
StrataXGS Tomahawk Key Features
- 3.2 Tbps multilayer Ethernet switching
- Integrated low-power 25Ghz SERDES
- Authoritative support for 25G and 50G Ethernet Consortium specification
- Configurable pipeline latency enabling sub 400ns port-to-port operation
- Supports high performance storage/RDMA protocols including RoCE and RoCEv2
- BroadView instrumentation: provides switch- and network-level telemetry
- High-density FleXGS flow processing for configurable forwarding/match/action capabilities
- OpenFlow 1.3+ support using Broadcom OF-DPA™
- Comprehensive overlay and tunneling support including VXLAN, NVGRE, MPLS, SPB
- Flexible policy enforcement for existing and new virtualization protocols
- Enhanced Smart-Hash™ load balancing modes for leaf-spine congestion avoidance
- Integrated Smart-Buffer™ technology with 5X greater performance versus static buffering
- Single-chip and multi-chip HiGig™ solutions for top-of-rack and scalable chassis applications
Availability
The Broadcom StrataXGS BCM56960 Tomahawk Switch Series is now sampling.
Industry Quotes
Network Operators and Virtualization Partners:
(Note: Broadcom and Microsoft have collaborated on data center technology standards development, including those for storage networking protocols (RoCEv2) and network virtualization (NVGRE). Broadcom and Microsoft are co-founders of the recently formed 25G Ethernet Consortium.)
Albert Greenberg, Distinguished Engineer and Development Manager, Azure Networking, Microsoft Corporation
“Broadcom is a valued partner in our efforts to advance software defined networking, RDMA in the data center and 25/50G Ethernet technology.”
Zhang Cheng, Deputy Director of Engineering, Baidu
“Building out the next generation of cloud services in China requires both the cost-effective expansion of server/ storage networking bandwidth and radix beyond current 10G Ethernet, as well as the ability to deploy highly instrumented and operationally agile networks. Broadcom’s new StrataXGS Tomahawk series delivers industry-leading technology in both these dimensions, and like its predecessor switch families, provides Baidu a foundation for innovating in the architecture and orchestration of our data center networks.”
Dr. Justin Erenkrantz, Head of Compute Architecture, Bloomberg LP
“At Bloomberg, we feel that 25G based technology opens up a more natural growth model for both access and transport interconnects. The realization of simpler cabling will have a significant operational impact as will the consumption of silicon capacity in flexible denominations – including 25G, 50G and 100G. Broadcom’s leadership with the 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium demonstrates their commitment to helping operators build toward this future.”
Tree Qiu, Chief Network Architect, Tencent Corporation
“Broadcom’s leadership product portfolio in data center switching has helped enable Tencent’s deployment of high-performance leaf-spine network topologies. We are excited to see groundbreaking new technologies in the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series, including all-25Gbps interfaces and high 100GE port count, network visibility engines, intelligent traffic engineering and dense flow processing, which will help drive new heights in performance, software control, and economies of scale for cloud networks.”
Hatem Naguib, Vice-President, Networking and Security, VMWare
“With the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series, Broadcom is delivering the engine for economical, high-performance and scalable fabrics that can serve as the underlay foundation for the software-defined data center. With this announcement, we believe support for network virtualization is now becoming a minimum requirement for any physical network in the new software-defined world, whether in mainstream enterprises, web-scale organizations or service providers. Customers will be able to deploy the VMware NSX network virtualization platform to operate with networking solutions powered by the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series to build fast, agile, secure virtual networks.”
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs):
Parviz Ghalambor, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Brocade
“As part of Brocade’s commitment to power the software-defined data centers of tomorrow, we are excited to be working with Broadcom to develop StrataXGS Tomahawk based Ethernet fabrics for our customers. By enabling impressive single-chip port density at leading-edge 25GE and 100GE throughputs and delivering critical features for multi-tenancy, storage convergence, network security and monitoring, Broadcom helps augment the performance and application reach of our data center portfolio, including the widely-deployed MLX, VDX, and ICX platforms.”
Arpit Joshipura, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing, Dell Networking
“Dell Networking has a history of several ‘firsts’ with Broadcom as a leading partner on Open Networking. Broadcom’s StrataXGS Tomahawk Series helps us to continue expanding the vision of scale out and converged architectures to higher density 25/40/50/100GE as customers deploy simpler and flatter data center networks. Together we’re designing true Open Networking platforms to help deliver the operational flexibility and best-of-breed technology choices that are paramount to modern cloud networking.”
Dominic Wilde, Vice President, Global Product Management, HP Networking
“Our customers are looking to SDN technology to speed innovation and drastically improve data center performance. As long-standing partners, HP and Broadcom are collaborating on data center converged infrastructure solutions, and with the introduction of the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series—which marks a networking inflection point towards all-25Gbps based interconnect–we are delivering enhanced networking connectivity with greater performance, improved efficiency and lower economics.”
Yu Li, General Manager, Data Center Network Product Line, Huawei Technologies
““Huawei and Broadcom have enjoyed a long-standing partnership in bringing innovative carrier, enterprise and data center networking platforms to market based on StrataXGS and StrataDNX technologies. Switching solutions such as the new StrataXGS Tomahawk Series can help handle the exploding diversity and scale of cloud applications and enable an era of 100GE software-defined networking.”
Jonathan Davidson, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Security, Switching and Solutions Business Unit (S3BU), Juniper Networks
“The success of Juniper Networks’ QFX 5100 Series switches in cloud and carrier data centers worldwide attests to our engineering excellence in driving time-to-market and extracting feature richness from configurable merchant silicon. Broadcom’s latest StrataXGS Series for cloud-scale networking delivers market-leading performance and provides Juniper a platform to drive innovations in network visibility, analytics and virtualization. This is key to our strategy of helping to co-create High-IQ Networks to deliver greater agility, automation, efficiency and security to our cloud building customers.”
Network Operating System Partners:
Prashant Gandhi, Vice President of Product Management & Strategy, Big Switch Networks
“Big Switch Networks is pleased to collaborate with Broadcom on its latest StrataXGS Tomahawk Series of high-density 25GE and 100GE switches. Our bare metal SDN solutions — Big Cloud Fabric and Big Tap Monitoring Fabric — demand the scale, performance and telemetry that Tomahawk provides. These solutions dramatically reduce CAPEX & OPEX due to bare metal economics and SDN-driven zero-touch fabric operations compared to proprietary box-by-box networking solutions.”
JR Rivers, CEO, Cumulus Networks
“The pace of innovation from Broadcom – illustrated now with the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series – continues to make custom silicon unnecessary for networking. The availability of Broadcom’s leading-edge silicon to a large ecosystem of industry standard hardware and software partners brings a high degree of scalability and cost effectiveness to open networks. We are excited to be involved with Broadcom in pushing forward the next generation of platforms and network architectures based on their StrataXGS Tomahawk Series.”
James Liao, CEO, Pica8
“Pica8’s extensive collaboration with Broadcom has produced the industry’s most capable OpenFlow switching operating system based on StrataXGS silicon and has furthered the adoption of the disaggregated-network model. We look forward to working with Broadcom on the new StrataXGS Tomahawk generation of switch silicon and creating value-added network software solutions that capitalize on its unprecedented bandwidth, flow processing scale, and instrumentation abilities.”
Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs):
George Tchaparian, Senior Vice President of Research & Development, Accton Technology Corporation
“Accton has partnered with Broadcom to develop a rich portfolio of open networking platforms having robust performance, software portability, differentiated design quality and cost efficiency to meet the needs of cloud data centers. We are excited by the release of the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series as Accton will introduce multiple open networking platforms based on this disruptive switch silicon family. Together, we look forward to enabling a new wave of switch deployments at 25GE, 40GE and 100GE that will transform the economics of cloud scale networks.”
Harrison Chang, President, Alpha Networks, Inc.
“For more than a decade, Alpha Networks has closely partnered with Broadcom to deliver to our joint customers a world-class Ethernet switch portfolio that has proven its excellence in silicon engineering, system engineering and meeting the needs of customers. We are excited to bring to market a new class of switching solutions based on the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series with performance levels never before seen in our industry.”
Jeff Chen, President, Delta Networks, Inc.
“DNI has always been Broadcom’s premier partner in providing customers with excellent quality, superior features, good power efficiency and competitive cost solutions. Broadcom’s StrataXGS Tomahawk Series will make data center switches capable of delivering up to 32 ports of 100GbE and 64 ports of 40GbE. It is our honor to participate in this revolutionary product development. We expect great mutual success through our cooperation.”
Jack Tsai, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Business Group, Inventec Corporation
“Inventec’s partnership with Broadcom on the new StrataXGS Tomahawk Series gives us the opportunity to develop innovative next-generation data center switches to meet growing customer demands. We are committed to leveraging our world-class engineering and manufacturing capabilities to introduce a Tomahawk-based, 1RU, 32 x 100G spine switch into our emerging product portfolio.”
Mike Yang, Vice President and General Manager, Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT)
“QCT’s first bare-metal 10GE switching platform deployed in cloud datacenters was the result of our close collaboration with Broadcom. The collaboration resulted in best-in-class networking performance and quality and we’re now working together on the new StrataXGS Tomahawk Series, which sets an industry standard for dense 25G and 100G Ethernet connectivity and network instrumentation capabilities. Together, we’re building out the next generation of software-defined data centers with open, scalable, ultra-high-performance switching solutions.”
Emily Hong, President, Wiwynn Corporation
“Wiwynn’s focus on datacenter architecture innovation, technology integration, and market velocity make us an ideal solutions partner for bringing integrated systems to customers. We are utilizing the sheer switching capability and superb networking features of the impressive Broadcom StrataXGS Tomahawk Series to develop differentiated converged I/O platforms.”
Interconnect Solutions Partners:
Rafik Ward, Vice President, Marketing, Finisar Corporation
“Finisar and Broadcom are well aligned in delivering state-of-the-art technologies to propel the transitions in Ethernet connectivity speeds. Advances in optical interconnects are necessary at these speeds and Finisar’s leadership in optical communications will help Broadcom bring this new vision of data center Ethernet connectivity to reality. Finisar’s broad portfolio of 100G optical transceivers and active optical cables, including optical modules supporting emerging 25GbE interfaces, match well with the advanced switching technology in the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series for 25G and 100G Ethernet scale-out and 25G Ethernet to the server.”
Greg Young, President and CEO, Luxtera, Inc.
“We expect Broadcom’s StrataXGS Tomahawk Series to be the catalyst for a new wave of network infrastructure, achieving a marked increase in port density, connectivity bandwidth and compute scale. This high-density technology will help drive explosive growth in leaf-spine networks that demand low-cost optical interconnect and accelerate the market transition to 25/50/100G Ethernet. As the leading provider of advanced 25/50G/100G silicon photonics optical transceivers for cloud computing, storage and HPC interconnect, we are proud to partner with Broadcom in delivering scalable and cost effective solutions to enable the next generation of data center networks.”
Industry Analysts:
Seamus Crehan, President, Crehan Research
“Given that the vast majority of cloud-scale servers are now being deployed with network connection speeds of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and higher, we are already seeing pent-up demand for cost-effective high-density 25 Gigabit Ethernet top-of-rack data center switches and 100 Gigabit Ethernet spine and aggregation switches. Broadcom’s new StrataXGS Tomahawk Series is addressing this demand and should help propel the data center switch market beyond the current 10 Gigabit era, just as the StrataXGS Trident Series helped drive this market beyond the one Gigabit era.”
Michael Howard, Infonetics Research
“Increasing network bandwidth, choking numbers of workloads in motion, inefficient scaling of the network and the shift to SDN is creating a complex, highly dynamic environment in today’s data centers that begs for new solutions. It appears that the high degrees of configurability, scaled capacities, analytics and ability to take part in control and optimization, together make the StrataXGS® Tomahawk Series a dream to help tame the operations of mega scale data centers. Broadcom obviously worked with the thought leaders and innovators among the largest data center operators and those supplying the network equipment in order to develop this chipset.”
Bob Wheeler, The Linley Group
“Broadcom continues to deliver tools for architects of next-generation software defined networks. The StrataXGS Tomahawk Series delivers not only immense bandwidth, but advances in switch instrumentation and network control. These features should be a catalyst for developers of operating systems, network-virtualization software and orchestration controllers as they look to SDN in solving the challenges inherent in mega scale cloud networks.”
Resources
1 As defined by 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium and under standards development in IEEE 802.3
2 As compared to existing 10Gbps per-lane interconnect
3 As compared to previous generation 40GE switch devices
4 As compared to an equivalent number of currently available 40GE switch platforms in the same form factor, connected in the same leaf-spine topology
