Tencent makes its co-packaged optics move
- Tencent is the first hyperscaler to announce it is deploying a co-packaged optics switch chip
- Tencent will use Broadcom’s Humboldt that combines its 25.6-terabit Tomahawk 4 switch chip with four optical engines, each 3.2 terabit-per-second (Tbps)
Part 2: Broadcom's co-packaged optics
Tencent will use Broadcom’s Tomahawk 4 switch chip co-packaged with optics for its data centres.
“We are now partnered with the hyperscaler to deploy this in a network,” says Manish Mehta, vice president of marketing and operations optical systems division, Broadcom. “This is a huge step for co-packaged optics overall.”
The Chinese hyperscaler will use Broadcom’s 25.6Tbps Tomahawk 4 Humboldt, a hybrid design where half of the chip’s input-output (I/O) is optical and half is the chip’s serialisers-deserialisers (serdes) that connect to pluggable modules on the switch’s front panel.