Broadcom announced the launch of the BCM8958X, its high bandwidth monolithic automotive Ethernet switch device.
Broadcom has started shipping samples and evaluation boards of the BCM89586M to its customers and partners.
Broadcom’s BCM8958X switch is designed to address the bandwidth need for in-vehicle networking applications and facilitate the adoption of software defined vehicles (SDV).
The BCM8958X features 16 Ethernet ports of which up to six are 10 Gbps capable, as well as integrated 1000BASE-T1 and 100BASE-T1 PHYs, providing flexibility and switching capacity to support automotive zonal electronic control unit (ECU) and central compute ECU architectures.
Additionally, this switch is equipped with an advanced rule-based packet filter engine that can adapt to different vehicle operation modes to enhance driving safety.
The BCM8958X is optimized for use in both zonal ECUs and central compute ECUs that can switch and route large volumes of data for real time decision making. Together with the BroadR-Reach PHYs (BCM8983X, BCM8988X, and BCM8989X) and sensor MCUs (BCM8910X), Broadcom provides the industry’s most comprehensive automotive Ethernet portfolio to enable an end-to-end network in the car.
The BCM8958X provides the interface scalability, hardware virtualization, Layer 3 routing, MACsec and Layer 2 security needed to support new software applications and features for SDV.
Vijay Janapaty, vice president and general manager of the Physical Layer Products Division at Broadcom, said: “Our new high bandwidth BCM8958X automotive switch along with our field proven 802.3ch Ethernet 2.5G/5G/10Gbps and 100M/1G PHYs enable our customers to create future proofed networking ECUs.”
James Hodgson, principal analyst at ABI Research, said: “Ethernet switches, like Broadcom’s BCM8958X family, with large switching capacity are a key component in the future zonal architecture, allowing for the real-time and secure exchange of high-volume data between vehicle domains.”