Broadcom's 28nm multicore communications processors

The folks from Broadcom have introduced the 28 nanometer (nm) XLP 200-Series, a new line of low-power multicore communications processor solutions optimized to meet the performance, scalability, and efficiency demands of enterprise, service provider 4G/LTE, data center, cloud computing and software defined networking (SDN) environments.

This  introduction demonstrates the successful integration of NetLogic Microsystems and notably expands Broadcom's addressable market within the $3B communications processor market.

The Broadcom XLP 200-Series, the world's first 28nm multicore communications processor family, delivers up to 400 percent faster performance (as compared to competitive communications processors) while lowering power consumption by up to 60 percent (as compared to competitive 65nm and 40nm solutions). Providing optimum performance for data plane, control plane and heterogeneous applications, the XLP 200-Series is the only communications processor family in the industry to combine quad issue, quad threading and 2 GHz out-of-order execution capabilities with integrated networking and security acceleration – all in a single-chip solution.

Total security acceleration technology
To address the exponential growth in malware and intrusion threats in the network and cloud, the XLP 200-Series features the industry's most complete, high performance suite of security features, allowing network managers to thoroughly inspect, encrypt, authenticate and secure Internet traffic at wire speeds. Developed in partnership with the world's leading network equipment companies, the XLP 200-Series is the first to integrate a grammar processing engine, a fourth generation regular expression (RegEx) engine, and a broad range of autonomous encryption and authentication processing engines to deliver comprehensive Layer 7 deep-packet inspection (DPI) capabilities and complete offload of the compute-intensive security functions from the CPU cores.  

Market Drivers

• Global IP traffic expected to grow 18-fold by 20163
• The number of connected devices is expected to reach 50B by 2020 (6X the world's population) (Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2011-2016)
• Massive traffic growth challenges current network architecture (Source: Infonetics Service Provider Forecast, 4Q11)
• Overall cloud IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 66 percent from 2012 – 2015 (Source: Cloud Index, 2010 – 2015)

XLP 200-Series Key Features

• Best-in-class Processor Core: Featuring quad-issue, quad-threading and out-of-order execution
• Total Security Acceleration Technology: High performance grammar processing, DPI/RegEx engine, encryption/decryption and authentication delivers unparalleled hardware protection against malware and other security threats
• Autonomous Acceleration Engine Modules: Offloads processing tasks, freeing up the cores to perform other compute-intensive application dependent tasks
• Hardware Acceleration: For important communications functions such as packet ordering, network management, compression/decompression and RAID5/6 storage
• Processor Core Enhancements: Improved pre-fetch performance and branch mis-predict penalties
• Processor Cache Architecture: MOESI+ coherent, three-level cache architecture and shared 16-way set associative Layer 3 cache
• Memory Subsystem: On-chip DDR3 memory controller; configurable channel width (40 or 72 bits)
• Fast Messaging Network System: Low-latency, high-speed system allows non-intrusive internal communication and control messaging among NXCPUs, acceleration engines and input/output
• Software Development Kit (SDK): Comprehensive SDK with reference and production-ready software components accelerates time-to-market

Availability
The XLP 200-Series is sampling now with production volume slated for 2H 2013. Multiple device options and configurations are available. Visit www.broadcom.com to learn more.

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