: Chip giant's latest ASIC promises 200GbE to up to 512 GPUs
Broadcom began shipping its answer to Nvidia's upcoming Quantum-X and Spectrum-X switches on Tuesday: the Tomahawk 6. The chip doubles the bandwidth of its predecessor and comes in both standard and co-packaged optics flavors.comes as Broadcom looks to play a bigger role in AI networks — a space where Ethernet has historically trailed Nvidia's InfiniBand interconnect tech.
Both chips offer 102.4Tbps of aggregate bandwidth and make use of 200Gbps PAM4 serializer/deserializers . This means a single switch package will now be able to support up to 512 ports at 200Gbps, or, if you're prioritizing bandwidth over density, up to 64 ports at 1.6Tbps. This is mainly a benefit of the chip's increased bandwidth and not unique to Broadcom. Other 102.4Tbps ASICs, like those from Nvidia, should also enjoy similar improvements in efficiency.
This is actually what Intel did with its Gaudi accelerators. Each Gaudi3 OAM module featured 24 200GbE ports. Three ports were dedicated to the scale-out network, while the remainder enabled each of the eight accelerators to communicate with each other at roughly 1TBps of bidirectional bandwidth. CPO also has the advantage of allowing for greater port densities. You can pack more fiber ports onto the front of a switch than you can QSFP cages.
Nvidia's Quantum-X photonic switches are expected to hit the market later this year and will offer 144 ports of 800Gbps InfiniBand connectivity, which you might have noticed is more than Broadcom's TH6.
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