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BROADCOM ANNOUNCES BREAKTHROUGH CHIP TECHNOLOGY

Broadcom Corp, a leading provider of silicon solutions enabling broadband communications, announced a breakthrough chip technology that enables 4.25 Gigabit per second (Gbps) serial transmission in Fibre Channel (FC) storage area networks (SANs). Each of the three new products being introduced, the Broadcom BCM8421, BCM8422 and BCM8426, provides interconnect technology for Fibre Channel hard drive storage systems as well as retiming/repeating solutions for transmitting data throughout the SAN using the FC protocol. Next generation Fibre Channel switches and back-end hard drive storage arrays can now be deployed with higher performance than existing 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps Fibre Channel solutions, but at comparable costs.

Data transmission within currently deployed Fibre Channel storage area networks occurs at 1 Gbps or 2 Gbps speeds. These speeds have sufficed for SANs until the present day. However, the next generation SAN requires faster Fibre Channel transmission speed and improved interconnection bandwidth to reduce and eliminate bottlenecks. To address this need, Broadcom's three new storage devices greatly improve transmission performance within the SAN, allowing the transition from 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps to 4.25 Gbps.

"In these times of tight IT budgets, boosting performance while significantly reducing cost is critical for suppliers of server and storage products," said Richard Villars, vice president of Storage Systems Research at IDC. "4.25 Gbps Fibre Channel technologies that offer improved cost/performance will play a critical part in the next generation of storage target and initiator products being developed by OEMs."

The BCM8426 is targeted at midrange to high-end storage arrays and is a 12-port Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop Hub device that can be configured to connect to Fibre Channel hard disk drives in an Intelligent Bunch of Disks (iBOD) configuration. Designed specifically for low-latency performance, each port on the device has the capability of retiming or repeating to support the various configurations of back-end arbitrated loops.

"As a developer of high performance server and storage products, Sun is a leading supporter and contributor to the new 4.25 Gbps Fibre Channel interface," said Vit Novak, senior staff engineer for Sun Network Storage. "Incorporating Broadcom's Active Signal Integrity technology into next generation Fibre Channel products will improve RAS by providing diagnostics any place at anytime."

Targeted at midrange storage arrays, Broadcom's new BCM8422 is a 4-port Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop Hub device that can also be configured as a dual bi-directional retimer/repeater. For high-speed optical or copper links that reside within Fibre Channel switches and storage arrays, the BCM8421 singlechannel, bi-directional retimer/repeater chip was developed to solve very difficult channel impairments that storage system designers have to address in these large and complicated network devices. With Broadcom's EyeOpener technology, jitter performance can now be guaranteed on very difficult optical and copper interconnects and exceeds the Fibre Channel Intra and Inter Cabinet Signaling Specifications.

"As the first company to offer generally available 4.25 Gbps transceivers, we were pleased to see strong performance and interoperability between Broadcom's BCM8421 and one of our new 4.25 Gbps transceivers at a recent industry demonstration," said Don Bossi, president of JDS Uniphase's Transmission Products Group. "This type of product compatibility allows a smooth transition to 4.25 Gbps data transmissions."

All products in the portfolio feature Broadcom's advanced diagnostics called Active Signal Integrity (Active-SI) and Active Link Integrity (Active-LI) to help detect and recover from signal impairments at both the physical and link layers of the transmitted Fibre Channel data. With built-in advanced diagnostics, these devices greatly improve RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) to the storage network. Additionally, these products are developed utilizing 0.13-micron CMOS process technology and feature small BGA packaging to reduce board space and power requirements of storage networking equipment.

"Broadcom is investing resources in the storage area to enable a higher performing and lower cost infrastructure similar to our success in first introducing and driving Gigabit Ethernet over copper technology," said Nariman Yousefi, Broadcom's vice president and general manager of Networking Physical Layer/Optical Line of Business. "Our breakthrough 4.25 Gbps Fibre Channel technology enables our OEM partners to easily transition from their existing 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps networks at similar costs."