* Broadcom’s Gigabit Ethernet controllers use PCI Express bus
Broadcom last week shipped several Gigabit Ethernet controllers that take advantage of the new, high-speed PCI Express bus that is being used in servers.
Broadcom says the devices are the first Gigabit Ethernet controllers on the market to support the bus. The company has server, desktop and mobile versions of the controllers available.
PCI Express is the latest generation of I/O, following in the footsteps of PCI and PCI-X. According to the PCI-SIG, the group behind these standards, a typical 64-bit, 133-MHz PCI-X 1.0 device has about 11.5M bit/sec of bandwidth per signal pin. PCI Express, provides for up to 125M bit/sec per signal pin.
The result is more headroom for network communications. Earlier generations were a bottleneck for high-speed networking and were one factor preventing servers from reaching the full potential of Gigabit Ethernet.
It is widely believed that PCI Express will become the dominant I/O mechanism for servers and desktops, though vendors are only starting to roll the technology into their products.
Broadcom’s new chips have an integrated 10/100/1000M bit/sec Gigabit Ethernet MAC, integrated PHY and on-chip buffer memory. They can be used either in LAN-on-motherboard implementations or in network interface cards. While you wouldn’t buy the chips yourself, a supplier is bound to bring you the technology in the form of a network interface card.
