
Broadcom ships latest networking chip to speed AI
SAN FRANCISCO, June 3 (Reuters) - Broadcom (AVGO.O), opens new tab has begun to ship its latest networking chip that aims to speed AI, the company said on Tuesday.
The chip, called the Tomahawk 6, boasts double the performance compared with the prior version and other traffic control features that make the networking chip significantly more efficient, Ram Velaga, a Broadcom senior vice president, told Reuters in a Monday interview.
The speed boost means that fewer networking switches are needed to perform the same task, Velaga said.
Broadcom's networking chips have gained increased importance because of AI. When constructing the necessary data centers for AI applications, infrastructure builders must string together hundreds or thousands of chips.
Building large-scale clusters of networked chips requires specialized networking gear and chips, of which the Tomahawk series of processors is one such component.
With the Tomahawk 6, Broadcom's engineers have boosted its speed and capabilities to the point where it can be used to construct the larger data centers that are necessary for AI, which can be over 100,000 graphics processors (GPUs) strung together, Velaga said.
"In a couple of years, you will start to see a million GPUs housed inside a physical building," he said.
Broadcom's networking chips use the Ethernet networking protocol, which has been a networking standard for decades. Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab produces hardware that uses a rival tech called InfiniBand and several products based on Ethernet.
"All of these networks can be very simply done on Ethernet, you don't need esoteric technologies," Velaga said.
The Tomahawk 6 is the first product in that line that will use several chips combined into a single package, a tech known as chiplets that is widely adopted by other chip designers such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab. Adding chiplets roughly doubled the amount of silicon area used in the design, Velaga said.
Broadcom is producing the Tomahawk switch on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's three nanometer process.
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34 minutes ago
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Now Trump's tariffs hit America's supply of vapes as prices set to skyrocket
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Trump's trade war with China has also seen China-U.S. air freight and shipping capacity collapse limiting shipping capacity for cargo including vapes. The FDA's data only captures shipments properly declared as vapes. As a result, it has recorded declining vape shipments since 2020 even as industry sales have grown. An FDA spokesperson said the agency expects the number of shipments it captures to increase as it ramps up efforts to ensure compliance and prevent illegal imports. Unauthorised vape makers have also been moving production to Indonesia - a shift that prolonged tariffs on China would likely accelerate, the former employee said. Vape makers are "highly adaptable", the person said. "Whatever happens in the U.S., the industry will survive."


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