The BCM78800 series, known as StrataXGS® Trident 5, is a family of Ethernet switch chips specifically designed to cater to the performance, capacity, and service requirements of next-generation data center and cloud computing environments, as well as high-bandwidth enterprise and mobile network applications. The architecture of Trident 5 boasts an array of advanced features, including a new on-chip neural-network inference engine called NetGNT. This engine provides enhanced capabilities for telemetry, security, and traffic engineering. It can recognize various traffic patterns in real-time, such as those common in AI/ML workloads, and invoke congestion-control techniques to maintain network performance without impacting throughput or Ethernet switch latency.

In addition to its robust connectivity, Trident 5 offers support for 800G Ethernet ports and features an increased parsing depth compared to its predecessor, the Trident 4 family, ensuring future-proofing for emerging telemetry and tunnel encapsulation requirements in the rapidly evolving data center markets.

Some key attributes and benefits of the BCM78800 series include:

  1. Robust Connectivity: Support for up to 160 instances of the industry’s best-performing, longest-reach 100G PAM-4 integrated SerDes core, enabling a wide variety of optical and direct attached copper (DAC) links with up to 4m DAC reach.
  2. Cost- and Power-Optimized: Designed for next-generation data center and campus networks, supporting 400G Top of Rack (ToR) switches with a compiler-programmable architecture.
  3. On-Chip Traffic-Analysis Neural-Network Engine (NetGNT): Provides advanced capabilities for telemetry, security, and traffic engineering, enabling real-time pattern recognition and congestion-control techniques without impacting network performance.
  4. Increased Parsing Depth: Future-proofs the product for newer telemetry and tunnel encapsulation requirements in the fast-evolving data center markets, surpassing capabilities offered by the Trident 4 family.
  5. Extensive Features: Offers an enterprise-grade feature set with a high degree of feature concurrency, ensuring adaptability to a variety of networking requirements. This includes scalable architecture for bandwidth requirements throughout the enterprise network, SKUs available up to 16.0Tbps, and industry-leading fully shared packet buffer and database sizes.
  6. Programmable In-Band Telemetry: Supports IFA 2.0 and a wide variety of load-balancing and congestion management features, including Dynamic Load Balancing, Dynamic Group Multipathing, Resilient Hashing, Latency-Based ECN marking, and Elephant Flow detection and re-prioritization.
  7. Broadview™ Gen 4 Integrated Network Instrumentation Feature Set: Provides full visibility to network operators into packet flow behavior, traffic management state, and switch internal performance.
  8. Powerful Processors: Features six GHz-class on-chip processors enabling powerful out-of-band streaming telemetry and a variety of embedded applications provided by Broadcom.
  9. Power-Efficient Implementation: Implemented in power-efficient 5nm process technology, ensuring optimized power and performance.

The BCM78800 series is programmed using the NPL high-level language, allowing customers to use off-the-shelf NPL applications from Broadcom or develop their own customized applications using the NPL DIY environment. This combination of features and capabilities makes Trident 5 an optimal solution for addressing the rapidly increasing scale of data center network switch deployments and distributed computing applications such as running AI/ML workloads.