In 1973, the United States launched Skylab, its first space station, and Pink Floyd sang about the “Dark Side of the Moon.” The same year, a technology was born that would revolutionize computing for the next several generations. This month, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Ethernet.

That ubiquitous blue cable turns 40 on May 22.

Ethernet, the family of networking standards that enables computers to locally connect to each other, is still the ultra-strong backbone to the many networks we use every day. Its use has extended beyond the enterprise of the 1990s to encompass service provider and home networks — and now it’s become the fabric of next-generation data centers. And its use is ever expanding, bringing connectivity capabilities beyond the business, service provider and data center networks — even to the open road.

At Broadcom, we’re constantly looking ahead at technologies that will change the way people work and play. But every once in a while, it’s nice to look back, to reflect and to remember the strides that we’ve taken and how they’ve had an impact. Next week, Broadcom Co-Founder, Chief Technical Officer and Chairman Henry Samueli will speak at an event being held at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, a region where Ethernet is being celebrated all month.

Back in the Day

Tech-biz old-timers like to reminisce about how Ethernet got its start at the infamous Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973. Back then, it relied on 10BASE5 — a fat coaxial cable with extra shielding that looked something like a stiff garden hose — and a slow Bus topology network that moved data at a rate slower than 10 megabits per second.

Where Ethernet was born: A scene from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in 1975. Photo courtesy of PARC Inc., via the Computer History Museum.

That seems tortoise-like compared to Broadcom’s offerings of 100 gigabit speeds today, but it was an amazing feat at the time. Several companies quickly hopped on the Ethernet train and that collaboration and interoperability made it a quick candidate for standardization by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In the ensuing years, Ethernet has undergone several dramatic makeovers — each time emerging as a technology even better suited to meet the demands of burgeoning and increasingly complex computer networks.

Over time, the cables got thinner — from the size of a garden hose down to the size of TV Coax, to Cat 5 twisted pair and eventually to fiber optic media. It also got easier to deploy. And Moore’s Law’s trajectory ensured that the data transfer rates grew ever-speedier.

By 1995, a fast-growing communications startup called Broadcom had launched the world’s first 10/100 Ethernet chip and, in 2000, would launch the first 10 gigabit CMOS transceiver.

Today, gigabit Ethernet is standard in local area networks — it’s plenty fast for home and office. But behind the curtain in the data center, data traffic speeds have been snowballing with no slowdown in sight.

From 2011 to 2016, global data center traffic will have nearly quadrupled to 6.6 zettabytes, according to research from Cisco. Mobile data, cloud computing and virtualization are changing the way data flows between machines. Ethernet, as always, evolves to provide the scaffolding and support: 10 gigabit Ethernet can be found in virtually any new blade server chassis sold by the Ciscos, Dells and H-P’s of the world.

Greener Ethernet by Broadcom

With all that appetite for speedy data, it would be easy to let Ethernet equipment consume enormous quantities of power. But unsustainable power consumption can’t go unchecked, which is where Broadcom comes in with its lineup of Energy Efficient Ethernet products. The first Energy Efficient Ethernet standard was codified in late 2010 and continues to be a factor in each subsequent generation.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are saved each year by putting high speed data links into a sleep mode during low traffic times, according to Nick Ilyadis, chief technical officer of the Infrastructure & Networking Group at Broadcom.

“It used to be that those channels were always active even when data packets weren’t being sent,” he said. “But that’s not necessary anymore. Our switches, controllers and PHYs can power up and down almost instantly based on traffic.”

Broadcom continues to innovate in this area through its work with the IEEE as well as several industry groups researching new ways to tackle the problem, including the Green Grid and Climate Savers Computing Initiative and GreenTouch.

Where Ethernet’s Going

Cut to the future. If you’re looking to build out a new data center in the next few years, you should fully expect vendors to sell 10 and 40 gigabit Ethernet: both have been ratified as specifications and are supported by Broadcom.

The need for speed doesn’t stop there. Broadcom is ready with products that will support 100 gigabit Ethernet. Last year, Broadcom launched a family of 100 Gbps PHY chips that enable analog signal access to the highest bandwidth local area network (LAN) pipelines imaginable. And, there’s no reason to doubt that 400 gigabit and even 1 terabit Ethernet could follow, as the IEEE has kicked off a study group in this area.

The most voracious data-using companies in Silicon Valley (think: Facebook, Google, Twitter) are making plans to build mega data centers that rival the size of small cities to support our cumulative social media habits. Undoubtedly, the Ethernet ecosystem will be among their most valued building blocks.

It’s easy to think of Ethernet as an enterprise-only solution relegated to infrastructure — but that’s hardly the case. The next place you might encounter Ethernet could be your car. 100 megabit Ethernet connectivity that carries both power and data will find its way into a variety of automotive systems, from digital audio to driver assistance and comfort controls. Broadcom works with a cross-industry group of partners through OPEN (One-Pair-Ether-Net), an organization that aims to promote Ethernet as the dominant in-car connectivity standard.

Car manufacturers can’t wait to start lining the inside of your car with twisted-pair Ethernet cables for several reasons: they’re cheaper, they’re lighter and they help create a seamless convergence of all the car’s disparate systems. And like all Ethernet technologies before it, it’s quickly being adopted and deployed now by automakers such as BMW and Hyundai.

“Ten years ago, Ethernet in cars would not have been on our radar,” Broadcom’s Ilyadis said. Perhaps the technology’s strongest trait, Ilyadis noted is that Ethernet is “adaptable,” not static. “It constantly evolves to meet market needs.”

Here’s to another 40 years.

The Interop show in Vegas is in full swing, and IT professionals of all stripes are seeing the latest in the networking equipment that keeps businesses running.

They are also looking to spend money: according to an Infonectics report, enterprises are expected to spend an average of $12.7 million on their network infrastructure this year, a 15 percent increase over last year.

Driving these trends is “Growth, growth, growth,” notes Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research:

“Growth is coming in all forms — in the amount of traffic traversing networks, in network capacity, ports, WAN bandwidth, and yes, even networking expenditures … lowering the cost of networking is top of mind for network managers,” Machowinski said.

Many businesses would like the ability to upgrade over time, instead of making one massive investment that may become obsolete faster than they would like.

Broadcom’s network infrastructure technologies aim to get at the heart of the issue, according to Ed Redmond, vice president and general manager, compute and connectivity, in the Infrastructure and Networking Group at Broadcom. With the latest Broadcom products, “customers can deliver higher performance, lower power solutions while leveraging existing investments.”

To address the growing market of enterprise networking upgraders, Broadcom introduced a slate of new products at Interop this week.  The first, the BCM54920 physical layer transceivers, can deliver gigabit speeds while lowering power consumption 40 percent compared to previous generations, thanks to integrated AutoGrEEEn® plus technology.

Read the full BCM54920 press release here.

To better compete in today’s fast moving economy, enterprises must be sure their network performance is in tip-top shape, so Broadcom has a new ARM-based low power system on a chip (SoC) that enhances performance and security for small-, medium- and enterprise-sized networks.

Read the full BCM58525 press release here.

Broadcom’s Interop offerings aren’t targeted solely to the data center, but also address how individual employees connect to the network, because what is the point of faster infrastructure if your employees are still bogged down by aging devices? Broadcom developed a 5GWiFi compatible SoC For Enterprise Access Point as part of our top of the line StrataGX™ Series. The SoC is designed to play to the numerous advantages of 5G WiFi, including more processing power, faster throughput and 80 percent lower power consumption.

Read the full BCM58522 press release here.

“Our latest StrataGX Series continues the rapid expansion of the StrataGX portfolio with sophisticated new security features to protect from malware and other threats that continue to challenge the enterprise,” Redmond said. “Broadcom is delivering a highly integrated, power-efficient processor to enable the rapid adoption of BYOD and demand for 5G WiFi in the enterprise.”

To see what else is happening at Interop, visit our show page, follow us on Twitter, or use the show hashtag #Interop.

Related: 

• Interop Preview: Network Infrastructure in the Spotlight

Industry Buzz:

• Enterprise Networking Planet: Broadcom secures WiFi with new Silicon
• Tech Zone 360: Broadcom introduces two new System-on-a-chip (SoC) processors at Interop
• EE Times Asia: Multi-port Gigabit PHYs boasts power saving AutoGrEEEn tech
• Light Reading: Virtualization takes the stage at Interop
• Telecom Paper: Broadcom unveils SoC for 5G Wi-Fi enterprise access points

Click graph to expand: See where Broadcom ranks with other chipmakers.

The third time is definitely the charm for Broadcom’s Ethernet Controller group.

We’ve again been lauded by IT Brand Pulse, an independent market research firm that conducts surveys to determine end-user perceptions of the top industry vendors. They look at overall market leadership, performance, innovation, reliability, service/support and price.

In the IT Brand Pulse 2013 Brand Leadership Survey, Broadcom not only won the Ethernet Local Area Network-on-Motherboard (LOM) Market Leadership award for the third straight year, we also won the Performance, Innovation and Price leadership categories.

The fact that this survey is completed by the actual users of the technology products, rather than a hand-picked board of vendors or academics, is a really big deal for the hardworking engineers at Broadcom. There are myriad industry awards, but this is the only independent survey that provides a comprehensive view of customer perceptions.

We’re excited to have been selected as the brand leader for our third consecutive year, particularly by the information technologists who depend on our products to run their businesses each and every day.

I’m very proud of our dedicated employees for their commitment and hard work, but also our customers for their continued support and recognition of our award-winning NetXtreme network technologies for the data center.

Related:

• Broadcom Wins Market Leadership Award for Second Year in a Row!
• Going NetXtreme: Dell and HP tap Broadcom for enhanced server technology

The StrataXGS® Trident II series is one of Electronic Products magazine’s 2012 Products of the Year.

It’s not every day that Broadcom’s hardworking engineers get recognized for their innovations, especially when their work deals in the particulars of managing the complex back-end of cloud networks. This week, the team that designed the StrataXGS® Trident II was lauded after the switch series was named one of the 2012 Products of the Year by Electronic Products magazine.

The award is an important triumph in the team’s collective careers, said Jim Harrison, the magazine’s West Coast editor, “as well as a milestone for Broadcom,” during a presentation at Broadcom’s San Jose campus this week. The StrataXGS® Trident II series was released last summer and addresses critical issues of cloud-scale networking.

The magazine chooses 17 winning products for the annual awards from among the thousands that hit the market each year. The winners represent significant advancement and innovative design in their respective categories, according to the magazine.

The members of the StrataXGS® Trident II design team on hand to receive the award were Avinash Mani, Mohammad Issa, Nick Kucharewski, Hsin-Yuan Ho, Venkatesh Buduma and Mike Jorda. The team has worked together for about 12 years, said Kucharewski, a Senior Director of Product Marketing in the Infrastructure and Networking Group.

Members of Broadcom’s StrataXGS® Trident II design team were on hand to receive the award, from left: Avinash Mani, Mohammad Issa, Nick Kucharewski, Hsin-Yuan Ho, Venkatesh Buduma and Mike Jorda.

Related:

• [Press Release]: Broadcom StrataXGS Trident II Awarded Product of the Year
• The Flexible Cloud: Smart-Table Technology Enables Network Scalability
• Broadcom’s 28nm Technology: Greater performance and less power consumption is only the beginning
• Virtualization Meets the Cloud at VMworld
• Broadcom Tackles Cloud Control at VMworld

Gartner has called the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend the “single most radical shift” in business computing since the PC invaded the workplace – and Broadcom is gearing up for even greater momentum around BYOD in 2013 with technologies that will address the challenges head-on.

For office workers, BYOD means more flexibility for the work environment, which makes them more productive while also allowing them to have a better work-life balance. But for IT departments, BYOD can be a real headache as they find themselves managing a flood of different devices, apps and platforms that each come with their own risks and benefits.

IT managers are facing the monumental task of provisioning appropriate gear and protecting the company’s proprietary information while also ensuring the privacy of the employee. The BYOD conundrum has only intensified as employees bring their own devices — such as tablet PCs — into the workplace, tap into the company’s network and still maintain access to consumer cloud software and productivity apps, such as GoToMeeting, Evernote or DropBox.

It’s also important to note that BYOD is about more than just managing potentially risky online activities and keeping information separate and secure. Perhaps the biggest BYOD challenge for network managers is the problem of “more”: More devices, more network traffic, more apps and more bandwidth requirements — all driven by the rapid uptake of data-rich smartphones and tablets by consumers and companies alike.

The influx of mobile devices — smartphones and tablets, notably — are being carried into the workplace and tapping into the company’s network to enable Web surfing, streaming, applications and other bandwidth-hogging online activities.

While this challenge can be dealt with on some level with new company policies and procedures, Broadcom is tackling it at its core: the network.

In a press release issued today, Broadcom introduced four new switch system-on-a-chip families that address the BYOD networking needs of different-sized companies, from mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 500 companies. The BCM5333x Series and BCM5334x Series are targeted at small businesses, while the BCM56150 Series is designed for mid-sized enterprises and the BCM56340 Series is for large-scale enterprises. From the release:

All are geared towards providing the intelligence and capabilities that network managers need to provision, secure and control company-issued or employee-proffered devices and information access. Based on Broadcom’s proven StrataXGS® architecture, these new devices were designed from the ground up to address these challenges, delivering unprecedented performance, advanced security intelligence and seamless connectivity to the Enterprise data center and cloud – all in a single chip.

Companies aren’t blind to the challenges of BYOD. Information Week found that 90 percent of IT professionals feel that mobile devices pose a significant threat to security. Despite the high number, just as many — 89 percent of IT workers — continue to enable BYOD, according to a Cisco survey (PDF). To help bridge this gap, Broadcom is pointing customers toward a technology called App-IQ, which enables application-level intelligence on a chip. App-IQ, based on the BCM56545, involves authentication of a particular application on the chip, keeping company data separate from everything else on the device while also implementing permissions and policies — without the need for an expensive, specialized appliance at the data center level.

Crafting IT policies that start to recognize and deal with BYOD concerns will certainly bring a new set of challenges for companies — but it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. As companies recognize their options for addressing their concerns, the shift could actually end up being a positive for both the worker, the IT department and maybe, one day, the bottom line.

Related:

• Broadcom.com: Your Network Redefined
• BYOD: Facing the Challenges When You Bring Your Own Device to Work
• eWeek: Broadcom StrataConnect Switch SoC Series Aims at SMB
• EE Daily News: Broadcom brings ARM to the Enterprise with new Ethernet switch SoCs
• EE Herald: Broadcom Unveils Switch SoCs for Enterprise and SMB Networks

You’ve seen them around town — in the coffee shops, on the train and, yes, even at home. They’re the people who carry two smartphones around — one for work and one for personal use. Others tote both a smartphone and a tablet, and can’t do without either.

The “two is better than one approach” has become somewhat of a necessary evil as a growing number of companies are faced with unprecedented security concerns around mobile access to their sensitive files and databases. Likewise for workers, carrying two devices has been the best way to keep the IT department from sniffing around personal mobile matters — from text messages and social media updates to Instagram photos and gaming apps.

But a shift is on the horizon and many companies that have been side-stepping the concerns that come with a concept called BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, are fast discovering that they can no longer ignore it. The idea of carrying around a second smartphone for secure access to company files and email is something that workers accepted – but never really liked.

For IT departments, the problem has only intensified as employees connect their own devices — such as tablet PCs — into the workplace networks while also having access to consumer cloud software, such as online storage sites that would allow company documents to be uploaded to a consumer cloud.

In the U.S. alone, 37 percent of workers are bringing their own gadgets into the workplace without formal permissions or policies in place, according to Forrester Research. Globally, that number jumps to 57 percent, according to a study of 17 global markets by research firm Ovum. Meanwhile, 18 percent of the respondents to Ovum’s survey said their employer’s IT department has no idea that workers are using their own gadgets, while 28 percent of those surveyed said IT managers “actively ignore” BYOD.

Yet, companies aren’t blind to the problem — Information Week found that 90 percent of IT professionals feel that mobile devices pose a significant threat to security. Still, 89 percent of IT workers enable BYOD, according to a Cisco survey (PDF), while  an estimated 80 percent of the global workforce will be eligible to participate in a BYOD program by 2014, according to market researcher Gartner Inc.

The time has come for a discussion about BYOD and, at January’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a panel of experts will tackle the topic during a session called “Bring Your Own Device: Strategies for Securing Information in the Enterprise.” It’s an important discussion at a consumer-focused show because consumers, just as much as their employers, are interested in keeping personal information and company information separate.

While this challenge can be tackled in a number of policy-centric ways, Broadcom is pointing to a technology called App-IQ, which enables application-level intelligence on a chip. App-IQ, based on the BCM56545, involves authentication of a particular application on the chip, keeping company data separate from everything else on the device while also implementing permissions and policies — without the need for an expensive, specialized appliance at the data center level.

It’s also important to note that BYOD is about more than just keeping information separate and secure. There’s also the concern around personal devices — smartphones and tablets, notably — being carried into the workplace and tapping into the company’s network to enable Web surfing, streaming and other bandwidth-hogging, not to mention potentially risky, online activities.

Again, policies and permissions come into play, but Broadcom also offers a lineup of knowledge-based processors that are helping IT organizations parse, sort and analyze network traffic at the packet level for a more unified network. And, on the back end, Broadcom’s cloud-scale networking technologies allow more virtual applications while gigabit-speed 5G WiFi ushers in a more reliable connectivity experience.

Crafting IT policies that start to recognize and deal with BYOD concerns will certainly bring a new set of challenges for companies — but it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. As companies recognize their options for addressing their concerns, the shift could actually end up being a positive for both the worker and the IT department.

Not heading to Vegas? Get the latest CES news from Broadcom and our partners by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and reading the blog.

Related:

• Show Preview: A “Geek Peek” at Top Trends for the 2013 International CES
• What’s Your Connectivity Style? Take the Survey to Find Out!
• ZDnet: Broadcom Offers its Top Trend Predictions for CES 2013
• Forbes: Broadcom’s ‘Geek Peek’ – 6 Trends to Watch at CES 2013
• White Paper: Broadcom App-IQ Technology for Web 2.0 Application Intelligence in the Enterprise Edge Network (PDF)

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We live in a world today where people are connected around the clock. So it should come as no surprise that the number of connected devices – as well as the content, apps and services we consume on them – is exploding every year.

The global smartphone market alone is expected to reach 1.1 billion devices by the end of 2012, a 43 percent increase from 2011, according to research firm Canalys. By 2016, that number is expected to jump to 2.5 billion.

All of these connections have spurred the growth of data centers capable of handling the increased demands for bandwidth – but virtual traffic jams persist. That’s where knowledge-based processors step in to help alleviate the slowdowns.

At the most basic level, knowledge-based processors, or KBPs, are network processors that power search engines and accelerate speed and performance. Some of the newest KBPs, however, go beyond core functionality to hone in on improving one crucial aspect of Internet traffic: network searches.

According to Rajagopal Krishnaswamy, Associate Product Line Director for Broadcom’s Processors and Wireless Infrastructure group, KBPs allow data centers to handle more complex search requests by integrating associated data for search functionality and driving lower system latency.

“This new generation of KBPs returns the results in the same guaranteed amount of time, regardless of what you’re searching for, how complex it is,” he said.

Today, Broadcom introduced the world’s first 28 nanometer (nm) heterogeneous KBPs, a solution that upgrades performance in routers, switches, service gateways, security appliances and mobile infrastructure equipment by integrating knowledge-based processing hardware with NetRoute search technology for faster performance at lower power. In fact, Broadcom’s new KBPs serve up searches up to 24 times faster than current processors, while using less power.

The 28nm KBP launch is the third product launch in recent months that tap into the technologies that Broadcom has integrated since the February 2012 acquisition of NetLogic Microsystems.  And it surely won’t be the last.

Already, there are talks about what’s next for KPBs. The growth of network services in wired/wireless infrastructure and data center equipment, coupled with emerging trends such as Software Defined Networking and Open Flow, are driving the need for what KPBs can deliver: increased classification, forwarding and security processing.

Only time will tell exactly how the convergence of demands on data center, enterprise networks and service providers will shape the next generation of technology – but in the meantime, forward-looking solutions like KBPs will prepare us for the network demands of tomorrow.

Related:

• Broadcom’s 28nm Technology: Greater performance and less power consumption is only the beginning
• Wall Street Journal Blogs: Broadcom Shows Off First Fruits of NetLogic Deal
• Broadcom at Interop: Knowledge-Base and Multi-Core Processors Complete Broadcom Portfolio
• Broadcom Completes NetLogic Acquisition

Environmentally friendly alternatives like electric vehicles, eco-friendly modular homes, and alternative energy sources are in a race for sustainability as we attempt to slow down the cumulative effects of pollution, the thirst for technology and its demands on power consumption.

Technology can be one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions with people’s dependence on computers and mobile devices taxing data centers and the networks connecting them. It’s a complex equation: How do we balance performance and power with energy needs and resource demands?

Greening technologies across the data center has become an industry itself, with a report from research analyst group Pike Research showing that the worldwide market for green data centers are set to grow to $45 billion in 2016, up from $17 billion in 2012.

To help demystify the process for organizations embarking on data center transformation, The Green Grid created an Academy Course for its Data Center Maturity Model that trains data center managers and non-IT professionals on how to measure a data center’s energy efficiency.

Broadcom is a longtime member of the Green Grid organization, which educates and informs companies on sustainable practices in the IT and communications industries. Its energy efficient networking technologies effect change well beyond the data center through lowering operating power of network equipment from 70 percent to 95 percent during periods of low link utilization.

I’ve written about the importance of power consumption in the data center and Broadcom’s efforts to “green up” the technology we all depend on. But what’s the payoff?

For starters: Lowering data center power use translates to potential savings of CO₂ emissions up to 3.5 million metric tons (based on ~5 TWh/year) and the following equivalencies according to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency. The stats outlined below are based on the full deployment of energy efficient Ethernet on a population of links equal to those in use today, assuming all 10/100 links become 1G and account for some migration of data center links to 10G speeds.

Check out this infographic that quantifies just how much green IT can change the world:

  Related:

• Demystifying the Data Center, Part 1: Power Consumption Matters
• VMworld Preview: How the Cloud is Reshaping Data Centers
• Broadcom at Interop: Energy Efficient Ethernet is Good for the Planet
• Broadcom at Interop: Power Consumption Technology Plays Important Role

This summer, Broadcom showcased its newest solutions for cloud-scale networking for the throngs of IT professionals at VMworld. We also launched our latest solution for cloud-scale networking – the StrataXGS® Trident II.

Today, we continue the conversation around cloud-scale network architectures and how our new StrataXGS® architecture can ensure that, regardless of cloud network type and design requirements, cost-effective implementation can be achieved in volume scale.

Learn more about Broadcom’s cloud-scale networking innovations.

A critical element of cloud network scalability is the size of the forwarding tables in network switches deployed in the data center. This factor impacts many elements of data center scalability — the number of servers and the ability to load-balance and provide full cross-sectional bandwidth across switch links. In turn, these scalability elements directly impact application performance and mobility.

Traditionally, data center networks were designed with the basic premise that a server has a single identity, which was composed of one MAC address, one IP address and a single application.

Today, virtual machines increase the density of server identities with more MAC and IP addresses, as well as numerous applications. The number and types of active addresses in the data center network (MAC, L3 host and IP multicast addresses, LPM and ARP/next-hop entries) are impacted network topology designs – both legacy and emerging. The size of each of the forwarding tables in network switches has a bearing on how cloud networks can scale. When these tables reach capacity — because the forwarding tables in switches are small — scaling problems occur.

An obvious way to deal with these challenges is to increase the forwarding table size, which also requires larger memories and high operating rates. But implementing large memory blocks on high performance silicon can be costly and consume more power. Adding external forwarding table memories is not an option either because of the significantly high throughput demanded from single chip switch implementations.

Broadcom’s StrataXGS Trident II Smart-Table technology tackles this challenge through a multi-pipeline design for performance and port density scaling, along with a shared forwarding plane. It enables maximum sizing of table resources for different data center network topologies and optimal use of available memory resources.

For example, instead of having four fixed-size tables for L2 MAC entry tables, L3 IP unicast and multicast forwarding tables, LPM routes and next-hop tables — as seen in switches available in the market today — Smart-Table enables the tables to be unified into a single shareable forwarding table.

Finally, because switch forwarding table type and size requirements vary depending on data center application and network topology variances, Smart-Table technology allows configuration of the unified forwarding table capacity into unique Smart-Table Profiles, optimized for the specific type of network deployment.

To learn more about how Broadcom approaches network virtualization and SDN using innovative network switch designs for public, private and hybrid clouds, download one of our whitepapers or follow the conversation with us via Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

Related:

• Broadcom’s 28nm Technology: Greater performance and less power consumption is only the beginning
• Virtualization Meets the Cloud at VMworld
• Broadcom Tackles Cloud Control at VMworld

• VMworld Preview: How the Cloud is Reshaping Data Centers

With spiraling energy costs and increased demand for computing power comes a heightened focus on “greening” the data center. The topic has attracted even more attention of late after the recent New York Times investigation and multipart series about the impact of the cloud on the environment.

In an effort to enlighten the public on the true cost of constant iPhone use, Facebook-scrolling and Internet-surfing habits – including tallying the environmental toll exacted by the  data centers run by Yahoo, Google, Apple and other Internet titans – the Times conducted a year-long investigation into the power consumption of data centers.

One of the most striking results of the study, which tapped the data-crunching prowess of McKinsey & Company, found that “data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off of the grid.”

The Times reported:

 Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand.

Though the report has received a fair amount of attention (both good and bad), the crux of the articles should not be ignored. Data center managers, enterprises and the people who depend on them should be aware of the dangers of rapidly escalating power consumption.

Broadcom and the Big Picture

That’s where Broadcom comes in. Aside from considering the inefficiencies of active vs. idle technologies, we take a holistic view of the data center to determine mechanisms for keeping power consumption low while maintaining maximum efficiency.

Take this finding from the Times’ study: On average, servers only actually used 6 to 12 percent of their electricity. The remaining power was used to keep the servers idling and ready for activity. From Broadcom’s perspective, servers and computers  aren’t the only guilty parties for  abusing power in the data center. The network is also a key contributor to power consumption. A broader view of the data center’s elements – from storage to networking to compute – is critical for gaining a comprehensive view of the contributing sources in the data center.

Energy Efficient Networking

Broadcom spends a lot of research and development efforts around energy efficient networking technologies that moderate energy usage allow networks to maintain proper proportions. By leaving the low-power state when there is data to be transmitted, savings can be dynamic, switch times in and out of the low-power state are quick and deployment and management is automated.

 Broadcom has long been a contributing member to the Green Grid and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which merged this past summer in an effort to speed implementation of sustainable practices in the IT and communications industries. Most recently, Broadcom extended its Energy Efficient Ethernet portfolio with the launch of BCM54210E, the world’s smallest footprint, lowest power single Gigabit PHY featuring AutoGrEEEn Plus technology that lowers operating power up to 70 percent. AutoGrEEEn Plus expands energy saving throughout the network by automatically reducing the power consumption of the device when there is no active data transmission.

As organizations look to “green up” their data centers, the role of the network in maintaining reasonable power consumption levels remains crucial. Network equipment of all types can benefit from lower power consumption, which reduces energy costs and lowers overall operating costs for IT organizations. Expect Broadcom to be at the forefront of energy-efficiency innovations, with products integrating features deep into the physical layer to more comprehensively and effectively meet demands imposed by mobile and consumer applications.