Cloud-scale switch series delivers 3.2Tb/s

With the switch series, data centre networks running 10GbE at the top-of-rack (leaf) level and 40GbE at the end-of-row (spine) level can upgrade to 25 and 100GbE interconnect. Without increasing network equipment footprint or cabling complexity, data centres can accommodate growth in distributed server/storage workloads. According to Broadcom, more than 15 times the network bandwidth capacity can be delivered by a three-tier data centre fabric of StrataXGS Tomahawk switches, using CAPEX-efficient form factors.

Instead of upgrading server-to-switch connections to 40GbE, a StrataXGS Tomahawk based network driving 25GbE to the server reduces cabling elements within the rack by up to 75%. This also increases the number of server and storage nodes that can be interconnected in a leaf-spine topology to four. Through this dual-pronged improvement in bandwidth efficiency and port density, data centres can scale out their networks and in doing so achieve significant ROI.

The StrataXGS Tomahawk series is offered with Broadcom's BroadView instrumentation feature set, which is optimised for Software Defined Network (SDN) application ecosystems. This provides a wide range of application flow and debug statistics, link health and utilisation monitors, streaming network congestion detection and packet tracing capabilities. With this, operators have full visibility of network and switch-level analytics, allowing them to troubleshoot large-scale networks, apply controls for optimal performance, respond to potential problems before they happen and drive down OPEX.

The FleXGS packet processing engines within the StrataXGS Tomahawk series provide a suite of user configurable functions for flow processing, security, network virtualisation, measurement/monitoring, congestion management and traffic engineering, allowing operators to adapt to changing workloads and control their networks. The processing engines provide in-field configurable forwarding and classification database profiles and an application policy scale which more than 12 times greater than that provided in previous generation switches.These capabilities, along with increased flexibility of packet lookups and key generation as well as rich load balancing and traffic redirection controls, are accessible to the network control plane via software APIs. The software APIs are offered without sacrificing network data plane throughput or latency.

"Our StrataXGS Tomahawk Series will usher in the next wave of data centres running 25 and 100Gb Ethernet, while delivering the network visibility required to operate large-scale cloud computing, storage and HPC fabrics," said Rajiv Ramaswami, Executive Vice President, Infrastructure & Networking Group, Broadcom.

"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 32x100GbE form factor as well as the 25/50Gb Ethernet specification, which Broadcom defined and co-founded as an industry standard."