Fulcrum Microsystems has introduced FocalPoint FM6000 series of integrated wire-speed 10G and 40G Ethernet switch chips, which incorporate the company’s Alta high-speed Ethernet switching architecture.
The company said that its new FM6000 series switches feature its FlexPipe low-latency packet-processing pipeline, which can parse, modify and apply multiple rules to traffic at more than 1 billion packets per second.
The FM6000 series devices are based on Alta switch architecture that, in addition to FlexPipe, features 10G and 40G Ethernet port logic and third-generation RapidArray output-queued shared-memory architecture.
Fulcrum said the FlexPipe packet-processing pipeline in the FM6000 series devices delivers line-rate performance across up to 72 ports, offering non-blocking throughput for thousands of virtualised flows.
FlexPipe allows the functionality of several key logic blocks, such as the packet parser and egress frame modification unit, to be upgraded to support new data centre networking standards or proprietary performance-enhancing application tags.
This functionality enables switch manufacturers to sell switching systems that are field upgradable with support for emerging data centre interconnect topologies such as TRILL, SPB, and virtualised networking standards such as 802.1bg (Edge Virtual Bridging) and 802.1bh (Port Extenders).
The firm said there are nine devices in the FM6000 series, each offering a different port configuration and total bandwidth, ranging from 160Gbps to 720Gbps.
The FM6000 support the mix of storage, HPC and LAN data traffic with QoS and data centre bridging (DCB) features such as PFC, ETS, and QCN, simultaneously supporting lossless operation alongside bandwidth and latency guarantees.
The system-wide management feature offer line rate per-flow monitoring and policing for clear visibility and a single point of management.
