Trident 4 boosts enterprise switch capacity to 12.8 terabit

• Broadcom’s Trident 4 switch chip has a capacity of 12.8 terabits, 4x the capacity of its Trident 3.
• The chip reduces fourfold the cost of a 128x100-gigabit switch.  
• The Trident 4 adds compiler programmability  
• This is the company’s first switch chip in 7nm CMOS. 

Broadcom has unveiled the Trident 4, its latest family of switch chips for the enterprise. 

The largest-capacity Trident 4 family member, the X11 chip, has a switching capacity of 12.8 terabits. This is a fourfold increase in capacity compared to Broadcom’s current high-end enterprise chip, the Trident 3, announced in June 2017.  

The Trident 4 will also reduce the cost of a 128x100-gigabit switch by a factor of four. The current cost of a 12.8-terabit switch, a multi-chassis solution, is $245,000 not including the pluggable optics, says Broadcom, citing market research firm, The Dell’Oro Group.

“The announcement is significant both in updating the Trident line for enterprise and in adding compiler programmability thereby limiting the openings for competitors such as Barefoot - soon Intel - Innovium, and Marvell,” says Bob Wheeler, vice president of The Linley Group and principal analyst for networking.

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ONF’s published reference designs start to be deployed

Operators are already deploying the first reference designs published by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Three of the ONF’s five reference designs have now been made public. 

Just over a year ago, eight operators - AT&T, Comcast, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Google, NTT Group, Telefonica and Turk Telekom - took the step to design key components of their edge and access networks after becoming frustrated with what they perceived as foot-dragging by the systems vendors.  

AT&T is deploying one of the reference designs - the SDN-enabled broadband access scheme (SEBA). Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica have also said they will deploy SEBA during 2019 and 2020. 

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ONF advances its vision for the network edge

The Open Networking Foundation’s (ONF) goal to create software-driven architectures for the network edge has advanced with the announcement of its first reference designs.

In March, eight leading service providers within the ONF - AT&T, Comcast, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Google, NTT Group, Telefonica and Turk Telekom - published their strategic plan whereby they would take a hands-on approach to the design of their networks after becoming frustrated with what they perceived as foot-dragging by the systems vendors.  

Timon SloaneThree months on, the service providers have initial drafts of the the first four reference designs: a broadband access architecture, a spine-leaf switch for network functions virtualisation (NFV), a more general networking fabric that uses the P4 packet forwarding programming language, and the open disaggregated transport network (ODTN).  

The ONF also announced four system vendors - Adtran, Dell EMC, Edgecore Networks, and Juniper Networks - have joined to work with the operators on the reference design programmes.

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