New Cloud-Optimized NetXtreme C-Series Products Extend End-to-End Data Center Portfolio

News Highlights:

• Integrated flow processing engine, TruFlow™, increases server performance by up to 50 percent
• High performance 50G throughput delivers 30M packets per second with low latency
• Industry's lowest power, smallest package 25/50G solution improves efficiency of cloud servers

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today introduced a new, scalable 10G/25G/40G/50G Ethernet controller product family. The BCM57300 NetXtreme^® C-Series delivers the industry's lowest power and smallest package 25/50G solution for the cloud data center market. With this introduction, Broadcom further extends its end-to-end portfolio and reinforces its commitment to meeting the current and future needs of cloud-scale data centers. For more news, visit Broadcom's Newsroom.

With almost half of cloud service providers' servers virtualized and the number of virtual machines per server expected to double to 96 by 2017¹, it is critical for next-generation Ethernet controllers to accelerate the increased flow processing driven by virtualization. Broadcom's NetXtreme C-Series controllers deliver bidirectional 50G throughput with 30Mpps performance and the increased flow processing that data centers need to support higher virtual machine density. Integrated flow processing with TruFlow can double network throughput and provide up to a 50 percent increase in application performance compared to a software-only solution.

When combined with the StrataXGS^® Tomahawk^™ Ethernet Switch, the NetXtreme C-Series controllers form an industry-leading 25/50G end-to-end solution for data centers that delivers connectivity in accordance with the Broadcom co-founded 25/50G Consortium and draft IEEE standard. The BCM57300 provides rapid, hardware-based, congestion notification responses that are 5,000x faster than traditional software-based approaches. When combined with StrataXGS switches, data centers are able to avoid network congestion before it happens, enabling deterministic workload performance across the network.

"NetXtreme C-Series raises the bar for Ethernet controllers and enables a cost-effective path from 10G to 25G," said Rajiv Ramaswami, Broadcom Executive Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure & Networking Group. "Pushing the 25/50G Ethernet specification, which Broadcom defined and co-founded as an industry standard, to the server endpoint solidifies Broadcom's end-to-end offering."

"Our cloud data centers are growing at a rapid pace," said Liu Tao, Baidu Inc. Sr. System Architect. "Provisioning flexibility and network performance are key factors for both bare metal and virtual cloud services. We see 25G connections to the server as a compelling upgrade cycle. It is also critical that next generation controllers find mechanisms to scale the management of the increasingly large number of servers in our data centers."

"Our data center customers see traffic demand continually growing, and they need efficient and cost-effective solutions to scale to that demand," said Jyeh Gan, Dell Director, Product Management and Strategy, Data Center Solutions. "25G/50G Ethernet, coupled with advanced virtualization support and standards-based provisioning, represents a leap forward for data centers faced with the challenges of managing rapid growth. We are pleased to see Broadcom support Open Networking with compelling 25G/50G Ethernet solutions."

"Broadcom's NetXtreme C-Series of mezzanine adapters are a welcome addition to the Open Compute Project community," said Corey Bell, Open Compute Project Foundation CEO. "The unparalleled combination of 25/50G throughput and low power, in an open standard form factor, will facilitate the rapid adoption of 25G and 50G solutions for the cloud data center."

"The Broadcom NetXtreme C-Series Ethernet controller, when combined with the VMware NSX network virtualization platform, can provide an optimized infrastructure for building out a modern software-defined data center," said Hatem Naguib, VMware Vice President, Networking and Security. "With support for Geneve and VXLAN encapsulation offloads, the NetXtreme C-Series controller further enhances the efficiency and security of overlay data center networks. With high packet per-second processing capabilities, customers will also benefit from DPDK-based software gateways at the edge of the network that provide both flexibility and performance."

"As a result of initial large-scale cloud deployments we are forecasting that 25G/50G adapters and controllers will ramp much faster than 40G. Furthermore, as this technology sees broader market adoption, we expect that 25G/50G will continue to gain share and account for the second-largest shipment volumes, behind 10G, within four years of first shipments," said Seamus Crehan, Crehan Research President. "The combination of Broadcom's end-to-end solution — comprised of the NetXtreme C-Series controllers with the StrataXGS Tomahawk Series data center switches — is poised for considerable traction as these products enable data center operators to economically and efficiently scale their networks to handle ever-increasing traffic demands."

Bringing the Network Edge into the Server
Broadcom's NetXtreme C-Series Controllers feature the TruFlow engine, which processes flows rather than just packets, extending the network edge into the server Network Interface Card (NIC). Numerous benefits arise from distributing the flow processing from the Top of Rack (ToR) and server host CPU into the NIC, including:

• vSwitch Acceleration: Today, the server host CPU processes network packets from each Virtual Machine (VM) as if it were a physical switch in the network (called a virtual switch or vSwitch), performing functions such as editing, classifying, policing, and forwarding, all in software, and consuming valuable host CPU cycles. As the number of VMs per server has increased, it is not uncommon for more than 33 percent of the processing capability in a server to be spent on virtual switching. TruFlow enables data center operators to move this virtual switching from the host CPU into the Broadcom C-Series Controller, increasing available CPU cycles for application processing, and potentially increasing application performance up to 50 percent. 
  
  
• Flow Scalability: The rapid growth of mega-scale cloud data centers has increased complexity in network scaling and management. TruFlow distributes flow processing into the server endpoints, allowing data center growth without impacting network and application performance. 
  
  
• Software Defined Networking (SDN):  TruFlow implements the fundamental SDN protocol constructs of classification/match/action processing in hardware, including the latest OpenFlow standard. Distributing SDN protocols into the BCM57300 enables cloud operators to reap the benefits of SDN in their data centers with a flexible, scalable and dynamic network.

Additional NetXtreme C-Series Features

• Low power: <5W
• Low chip latency: 1.5-µs round trip
• Dual-Port 10/25G and single-port 40/50G
• Industry's smallest (14x14 mm) 25/50G Controller package
• Integrated base management controller (BMC)

Availability
Broadcom offers two families of standard adapter cards for customer deployment; PCIe NIC and OCP Mezzanine. Both adapter card families are based on the cloud-optimized BCM57300 NetXtreme C-Series of Ethernet controllers and are sampling now.

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Resources
¹ Infonetics

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a FORTUNE 500® company, is a global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom® products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments. With one of the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip solutions, Broadcom is changing the world by connecting everything®. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

Broadcom^®, the pulse logo, NetXtreme^®, TruFlow^™, Connecting everything^®, StrataXGS^®, Tomahawk^™ and the Connecting everything logo are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU.  Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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SOURCE Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Infrastructure