Tomahawk 6: The industry’s first 100-terabit switch chip

Part 2: Data Centre Switching

Peter Del Vecchio, product manager for the Tomahawk switch family at Broadcom, outlines the role of the company’s latest Tomahawk 6 Ethernet switch chip in AI data centres.

Peter Del Vecchio

Broadcom is now shipping samples of its Tomahawk 6, the industry’s first 102.4-terabit-per-second (Tbps) Ethernet switch chip.

The chip highlights AI's impact on Ethernet networking switch chip design since Broadcom launched its current leading device, the 51.2-terabit Tomahawk 5.

The Tomahawk 6 is more evolutionary, rather than a complete change, notes Del Vecchio.

The design doubles bandwidth and includes enhanced networking features to support AI scale-up and scale-out networks.

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II-VI’s VCSEL approach for co-packaged optics

Co-packaged optics was a central theme at this year’s OFC show, held in San Diego. But the solutions detailed were primarily using single-mode lasers and fibre.

Vipul Bhatt

The firm II-VI is beating a co-packaged optics path using vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and multi-mode fibre while also pursuing single-mode, silicon photonics-based co-packaged optics.   

For multi-mode, VCSEL-based co-packaging, II-VI is working with IBM, a collaboration that started as part of a U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) project to promote energy-saving technologies.

II-VI claims there are significant system benefits using VCSEL-based co-packaged optics. The benefits include lower power, cost and latency when compared with pluggable optics.

The two key design decisions that achieved power savings are the elimination of the retimer chip - also known as a direct-drive or linear interface - and the use of VCSELs.

The approach - what II-VI calls shortwave co-packaged optics - integrates the VCSELs, chip and optics in the same package.

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First co-packaged optics switches set for next year

Ranovus says two of its lead customers will deploy co-packaged optics next year.

They will deploy 25.6-terabit Ethernet switch chips but these will be proof-of-concept designs rather than volume deployments.

Hamid ArabzadehThe deployments will be used to assess the software and gain experience with their maintenance including replacing optics if needed.

“I do think 2024 is going to be the volume year,” says Hamid Arabzadeh, CEO of Ranovus, who expects to announce the customers before the year-end.

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