Broadcom's 7th Generation GigE Controllers Add PCI Express

Broadcom introduced its seventh generation NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet controllers featuring an advanced PCI Express host interface -- an industry first. Broadcom is offering three models of its new Gigabit Ethernet controller designed specifically for use in server, desktop and mobile PCs. The devices provide an integrated 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet MAC, PCI Express bus interface, on-chip buffer memory, and integrated PHY in a single-chip solution for LAN on motherboard (LOM) and network interface card (NIC) applications.


The PCI bus architecture has been ubiquitously deployed as a system I/O interconnect technology. PCI Express is an advanced version of the current PCI bus that provides a standards-based, high-speed, low pin count, chip-to-chip interface for computing platforms. Rather than utilizing a shared, parallel bus structure such as with PCI or AGP, PCI Express provides a new architecture whereby each link is a serial communications channel comprised of two differential wire pairs that provide 2.5 Gbps of throughput in each direction. Broadcom said PCI Express would allow the LAN connection architectures to scale with the end-users' throughput requirements.


Separately, Broadcom announced the shipment of its 12 million NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) controller portshttp://www.broadcom.com