Broadcom PCIe Gen 4.0 ExpressFabric PEX88000 Switches and PEX88T32 Retimer

Broadcom Inc. announced the production release of its PCIe Gen 4.0 ExpressFabric switch family, comprised of PEX88000 switches and the PEX88T32 retimer, enabling data center and cloud ecosystem partners to address the growing demand for computing and storage resources in modern infrastructure.

Ranging from 26 to 98 lanes and ports, the PEX88000 is an offering of PCIe Gen 4.0 switches and retimer, for high-throughput and low-latency applications such as deep learning, HPC and NVMe AFAs.

The PEX88T32 retimer is based on the company’s PCIe Gen 4.0 SerDes IP that has been used in a variety of the firm’s connectivity and storage solutions, and offers integration with PCIe switches. The retimer will help strengthen the ecosystem and accelerate the deployment of PCIe Gen 4.0 especially in AI/ML/HPC applications.

“The growth of data center workloads and applications continues to scale at a rapid pace, as ML and data inference platforms create new ways to transfer, analyze, optimize, store and use data. The adoption of innovative, next-generation technologies is vital for the creation and sustainability of smarter, optimized data centers,” said Jas Tremblay, VP and GM, data center solutions group, Broadcom. “The PEX88000 family of switches and retimer equip the ecosystem with the critical building blocks needed to scale connectivity using PCIe Gen 4.0 inside data centers, resulting in improved performance, efficiency and throughput.”

Since its initial sampling in 2018, the PEX88000 switch family has been tested across the industry to design and provide higher computing performance. This family of switches and retimer are to interconnect GPGPUs, compute accelerators, CPUs, SSDs and NICs in data intensive, and latency sensitive applications.

The firm’s PCIe Gen 4.0 ecosystem partners, including server OEMs and ODMs, drive manufacturers, cloud providers and GPGPU suppliers, leverage the PEX88000 to achieve performance with data throughput up to 16GT/s, while delivering power efficiency.

“As cloud providers modernize their data centers with PCIe Gen4-based infrastructure, they are looking to take advantage of NVIDIA’s GPU-accelerated computing platform for their ever-increasing AI and ML workloads,” said Michael Diamond, senior director, strategic partnerships, NVIDIA Corp. “NVIDIA is working closely with Broadcom to ensure our customers can benefit from the increased bandwidth and device connectivity that PCIe Gen4 provides.“

The PEX88000 has been released for mass production.