Broadcom Trident 4X Ethernet Switch ASIC (Tomahawk 5 Platform NIC/Switch)

The Broadcom Trident 4X / Tomahawk 5 platform ASIC represents the fifth generation of Broadcom's flagship high-radix Ethernet switching silicon, engineered to address the explosive bandwidth demands of large-scale AI training clusters and next-generation cloud spine fabrics. Fabricated on an advanced 5nm process node, the Tomahawk 5 ASIC achieves 25.6 Tbps of full-duplex switching capacity with support for up to 512 × 50GbE SerDes lanes, enabling flexible port configurations including 64 × 400GbE, 32 × 800GbE, or mixed 400G/800G breakout topologies. The architecture integrates Broadcom's proprietary Predictive Port Buffering and Advanced Flow Management technologies, delivering deterministic ultra-low latency below 900 nanoseconds cut-through forwarding critical for RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2) workloads prevalent in GPU-to-GPU collective communications.

From a feature standpoint, the Tomahawk 5 ASIC natively supports 400G-ZR/ZR+ coherent optics interfaces, enabling direct long-reach interconnects without external transponders. The silicon embeds comprehensive telemetry capabilities through Broadcom's INBAND Telemetry and INT (In-band Network Telemetry) framework, providing per-flow, per-queue, and per-port visibility at nanosecond granularity. Enhanced Weighted-Cost Multipath (WCMP) and Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB) algorithms optimize traffic distribution across fat-tree and Clos network topologies, reducing congestion-induced tail latency in All-to-All and All-Reduce collective operations fundamental to distributed AI model training.

The Tomahawk 5 platform is designed for seamless integration with open networking operating systems including SONiC, OpenBMC, and vendor NOS implementations, aligning with disaggregated network architectures adopted by hyperscalers and AI cloud providers. Hardware-accelerated support for PFC (Priority Flow Control), ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification), and DCQCN (Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification) ensures lossless Ethernet transport for RDMA workloads. The ASIC's power efficiency profile—delivering approximately 19.2 Gbps per watt—represents a significant improvement over prior generations, enabling operators to scale AI fabric bandwidth while managing total power envelope within existing data center infrastructure constraints.

Ideal for

• AI/ML training fabric spine switches interconnecting thousands of GPUs across multi-rack clusters running All-Reduce and All-to-All collective operations over RoCEv2
• Hyperscale cloud provider core and aggregation layer deployments requiring 25.6 Tbps non-blocking throughput with sub-microsecond latency
• High-frequency trading and financial services ultra-low-latency switching requiring deterministic cut-through forwarding below 900 nanoseconds
• Large-scale distributed storage fabric interconnects supporting NVMe-over-Fabrics (NVMe-oF) with lossless Ethernet transport
• Telecom and edge cloud data center spine layers requiring 400G/800G flexible port configurations and integrated coherent optics support
• Open networking and disaggregated switch deployments running SONiC or vendor white-box NOS platforms for AI infrastructure modernization

Technical specifications

Available from Omnixon Global. Submit an RFQ and our team will confirm configuration and availability for your order.