Broadcom Drives Ecosystem Transition with Industry-Leading PCIe Gen 5.0 Product Portfolio

Rhea-AI Summary

Broadcom has announced its PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio, aimed at enhancing data center performance with double the speed of PCIe 4.0. This new technology is particularly beneficial for applications requiring high performance and low latency, such as AI and cloud computing. The portfolio includes products with low power consumption and high lane counts, featuring the PEX89000 switch series that offers improved power efficiency and new security features. Broadcom emphasizes its commitment to interoperability, having distributed evaluation boards to major industry players for testing.

Positive

• PCIe Gen 5.0 offers double the speed of PCIe 4.0, enhancing performance in data centers.
• Broadcom's PEX89000 switches consume less than half the power of competitors, improving energy efficiency.
• Strong commitment to interoperability as evident from partnerships and evaluation board distribution to over 50 OEMs and ODMs.

Negative

• None.

Connected by Broadcom, Next-Generation Data Centers Interconnected with PCIe Gen 5.0 Technology will Receive Unprecedented End-to-End Performance

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 24, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO), the worldwide leader in PCIe, SerDes, and switching technology, today announced its broad, industry-leading PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio is setting the foundation for the ecosystem to build high-performance, next-generation servers. Broadcom PCIe Gen 5.0 SerDes, switches and custom silicon products, which are now available to OEMs, ODMs, and cloud providers, are actively being tested and demonstrated for wide-scale interoperability.

“For the past 20 years, PCIe has been the most critical and widely-adopted protocol for interconnecting CPUs, GPGPUs, FPGAs, and storage. Broadcom’s market-leading PCIe heritage and new PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio gives us the ability to seamlessly unify the data center where high-speed computing, low latency, and data processing is critical,” said Jas Tremblay, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Solutions Group at Broadcom. “Our industry-leading PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio ensures the ecosystem has the platforms needed to enable new applications such as AI/ML and cloud computing where large amounts of data are moving at an increasingly fast, real-time pace.”

Leading-Edge PCIe Gen 5.0 Benefits

PCIe Gen 5.0 offers double the speed over PCIe 4.0, which is critical to support data centers and storage servers supporting AI/ML, and hyperscale compute systems requiring high-performance, low-latency, scalable, cost-effective PCIe fabrics.

Wide-Spanning Portfolio Featuring Industry-First Solutions

Broadcom’s connectivity portfolio of PCIe Gen 5.0 products includes some of the lowest power, highest lane count, and lowest latency available in the industry. From ASICs to SerDes to switch and embedded analyzers, Broadcom is enabling PCIe Gen 5.0 industry-wide with a variety of products:

• Customized ASIC development support, with 32GT/s PCIe 5.0 SerDes in 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm process technologies, along with the support of PCIe 5.0 standard products.

• 32GT/s PCIe SerDes, featured on its new PEX89000 PCIe Gen 5.0 series of switches, delivers a drastic improvement in power-per-Gigabyte of data transfer over previous generations.

• PEX89000 switches consume less than half the power of Gen 5.0 switch alternatives and provide the best Gen 5.0 SerDes electrical performance headroom above the standard. The PEX89000 family also includes new, enhanced security features, including attestation and SPDM1.1, as well as telemetry and diagnostic features.
  
• The world’s first embedded analyzer in PCIe switch silicon, enabling trace capabilities in system with the PEX89000 switch family.

• Flexible PEX89000 evaluation boards for Gen 5.0 interop activity, including multiple expansion slots to evaluate complex systems with connectivity for Host, GPGPU, NIC, re-timer, and NVMe devices.

• Leading quality of service features to manage congestion.
  

End-to-End Ecosystem

Broadcom is deeply committed to and invested in the industry’s interoperability of PCIe Gen 5.0. From end-to-end demonstrations at industry events to the shipment of hundreds of evaluation boards, Broadcom is facilitating the ecosystem’s transition to PCIe Gen 5.0 as the technology is rapidly maturing and the dependency for its evaluation boards is growing.

All leading suppliers of accelerated computing platforms, processors, GPGPU, NVMe, re-timer, and test equipment products have received Broadcom PCIe Gen 5.0 evaluation boards for interoperability and demonstrations:

• Accelerated computing providers: NVIDIA
• GPGPU suppliers: Intel and AMD
• NVMe suppliers: Samsung, KIOXIA, Intel, and other NVMe suppliers
• Re-timer suppliers: Astera Labs and other re-timer suppliers
• Test equipment suppliers: SerialTek, and other test equipment suppliers
• 50+ OEMs and ODMs

“AMD and Broadcom have continued our longtime interoperability testing relationship,” said Raghu Nambiar, corporate vice president, Datacenter Ecosystems and Solutions, AMD. “As leading innovators of next-generation technology, we are dedicated to providing in-depth testing to help ensure PCIe Gen 5.0 systems, running business-critical applications in modern data centers, can perform successfully and are in-line for market implementation.”

“Astera Labs and Broadcom’s PCIe 5.0 solutions are critical to support the high-bandwidth connectivity demands of today’s workload optimized platforms,” said Sanjay Gajendra, chief business officer, Astera labs. “Our industry leading Aries PCIe 5.0 Smart Retimers with purpose-built fleet management features, coupled with Broadcom’s PEX89000 switch chip, enable a robust PCIe connectivity solution with seamless interoperation to unlock the many benefits of heterogeneous compute and composable infrastructure.”

“Intel and Broadcom continue to work together to bring advanced PCIe technologies to market, and PCIe 5.0 technology continues our long history of enabling the ecosystem with the robust building blocks needed to build a high-performance server solution,” said Dr. Debendra Das Sharma, senior fellow, chief architect, IO Technology & Standards, Intel. “As a leading contributor to the PCIe 5.0 standard, Intel is now sampling the industry’s first PCIe 5.0 based server platform. We are delighted that Broadcom is also contributing to the ecosystem with PEX89000 switch chips, SerDes, and PHY technologies.”

“PCIe 5.0 technology enables game-changing performance and throughput levels to compute-intensive workloads in the data center, especially for flash-based solid state drives,” said Neville Ichhaporia, vice president, SSD marketing and product management, KIOXIA America, Inc. “By working closely with Broadcom, we can ensure our drives will be a part of a seamless and successful transition to next-generation technologies.”

“As cutting-edge AI continues to spread across industries, demand for our multi-GPU systems has never been greater,” said Charlie Boyle, vice president and general manager, DGX systems, NVIDIA. “NVIDIA is working closely with Broadcom to incorporate their PCIe Generation 5 switches into our DGX system lineup to help provide our customers with the best tools to accelerate their work.”

“Samsung has been working closely with Broadcom to ensure that PCIe Gen 5.0 interoperability and testing is seamless,” said Soonjae Won, corporate VP, solution product & development, Samsung. “Our new PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe drives, together with the Broadcom PEX89000 switch, deliver an industry-first in the ecosystem with next-generation PCIe end-to-end solutions enabling large-scale deployment in the data center.”

In addition to the active interop testing of Broadcom PCIe Gen 5.0 evaluation boards, Intel and Samsung recently unveiled PCIe Gen 5.0 end-to-end demonstrations:

• At the Intel Innovation Conference, Intel cleanly linked end-to-end, from Eagle Stream to PEX89000 to the Astera Labs Aries PCIe 5.0 Smart Retimers, to Samsung PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe: Intel Innovation.
• Samsung demonstrated an end-to-end interoperability in November at Samsung Tech Day.

Click here for more information on the Broadcom PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio. For more information on all Broadcom products please visit https://www.broadcom.com.

About Broadcom
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including data center, networking, enterprise software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial. Our solutions include data center networking and storage, enterprise, mainframe and cyber security software focused on automation, monitoring and security, smartphone components, telecoms and factory automation. For more information, go to https://www.broadcom.com.

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