Broadcom announces industry's lowest power, highest performance 100GbE multi-rate Gearbox PHYs

IRVINE, USA: Broadcom Corp. has announced the industry's lowest power and highest performance multi-rate 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) physical layer transceivers (PHYs) for next-generation data center, enterprise and core networks.

The new Broadcom BCM84790 and BCM84793 gearbox PHYs extend Broadcom's industry-leading portfolio of 10GbE, 40GbE and now 100GbE physical layer devices while offering the first multi-rate interface for 4-lane (4x25 Gbps) and 10-lane (10x10 Gbps) bi-directional transmissions.

The low power 40 nm CMOS architecture dissipates only 2.5 watts per port, delivering power savings of more than 35 percent as compared to previously available solutions. The BCM84790 features a space-saving 17x17mm BGA package specifically engineered to support CFP network applications. The BCM84793 features a 19x19mm BGA package with the ability to support 10-lane bi-directional transmissions at 10 Gbps each. This added flexibility ensures support for future-generation networking formats such as CFP2 and CXP.

Optimized for IT professionals who design and manage high-bandwidth data center and enterprise networks, the BCM84790 and BCM84793 gearbox PHYs have the ability to multiplex and demultiplex data across four 25 Gbps channels to (or from) ten 10Gbps channels. Both devices can also be configured to support four bi-directional lanes at 10Gbps for 40GbE repeater applications, support Ethernet and optical transport networking, and are compliant with the IEEE 802.3ba standard for 100GbE and ITU OTL 4.4 signaling.