Broadcom, Tencent partner to accelerate commercialization of co-packaged optics network switch

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) and Tencent Holdings Ltd. today announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of high bandwidth co-packaged optics (CPO) network switches for cloud infrastructure. Under this partnership, Broadcom will provide the 25.6-Tbps Humboldt CPO switch device that features Broadcom's best-in-class StrataXGS® Tomahawk® 4 switch chip directly coupled and co-packaged with four 3.2-Tbps Silicon Photonics Chiplets In Package (SCIP) optical engines. Tencent has defined the system architecture and worked closely with Broadcom to develop hardware and software for field deployment of the 25.6-Tbps CPO switch system. Ruijie Networks Co., Ltd. will verify the design, manufacture and test the full CPO switch system, and then provide the finished product to Tencent. The jointly developed 25.6-Tbps CPO switch system will be demonstrated at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE) in Shenzhen from September 7th to 9th.

25.6-Tbps CPO Switch Product Highlights:

The slowing of Moore's Law coupled with the limitations of copper interconnect at high data rates has prompted the industry to rethink the architecture and deployment of high bandwidth network switches. Furthermore, next generation cloud infrastructure deployments require lower optics cost per bit and power consumption. Broad adoption of CPO solutions is critical to sustaining the rapid growth of bandwidth inside the data center driven by AI/ML, HPC, and networking workloads.

Traditional pluggable optical transceivers require high power to equalize signal impairments incurred on a signal as it traverses long traces and through multiple connector discontinuities in a standard switch system. By eliminating these interfaces and leveraging Broadcom's leading-edge uncooled continuous wave (CW) laser at 1310 nm for silicon photonics, the 25.6-Tbps Humboldt CPO switch delivers unmatched efficiency and performance paving a path for future generations of high bandwidth density CPO solutions.

Read the full press release here.

Broadcom