Broadcom unveils low-power 40GbE gearbox PHY

Broadcom Corporation introduced what it claimed as the industry's first quad port 40GbE gearbox PHY supporting 20Gbit/s input/output (IO) designs.

Optimised as a companion device to Broadcom's StrataXGS Tomahawk Switch Series, the BCM82764 high-density gearbox physical layer transceiver (PHY) converts 20Gbit/s signals to multiple lanes running at 10Gbit/s. Using Broadcom's companion PHY, customers have the option to provide legacy 40GbE ports while taking advantage of the full bandwidth of the switch.

Engineered for high-density switch environments, Broadcom's 28nm PHY utilises eight system-side and 16 line-side differential, high performance input/outputs (IOs) with transmit and receive equalisation, enabling both longer channel lengths and jitter performance optimisation. The new PHY provides a fully standard-compliant interface to some of the most widely used 40G Ethernet PMDs including CR4, LR4 and SR4 links.

Key features:

• 19mm x 19mm small form factor package specifically designed to interconnect with QSFP modules
• Ultra low-power dissipation under 1 watt per port
• Features four 2 x 20Gbit/s to 4 x 10Gbit/s bidirectional SerDes
• Three-dimensional internal eye mapper on each line-side and system-side receiver
• Supports standard Ethernet and HiGig data rates
• 10G Ethernet pass through mode

"Our new 40G Ethernet gearbox facilitates extremely large switch radixes while using minimal power and real estate, providing a very attractive option for system designers developing next generation cloud scale networking equipment," said Rajiv Ramaswami, Broadcom EVP and general manager, Infrastructure & Networking Group.