半导体行业观察·2025-10-14 01:01Core Viewpoint - Broadcom has launched its Tomahawk 6 - Davisson (TH6-Davisson) product, a co-packaged optical (CPO) Ethernet switch that offers an impressive 102.4 Tb/s, marking a significant advancement in next-generation networking [1] Group 1: CPO Technology and Its Advantages - CPO technology addresses the challenges of interconnecting thousands of GPUs in large-scale AI clusters by moving switches to the end of racks, creating a consistent low-latency network structure [2] - Traditional pluggable optical modules have limitations, including significant electrical losses, which can reach approximately 22 dB at 200 Gb/s channels, necessitating complex compensation and increasing power consumption to 30W per port [4] - CPO integrates the optical conversion engine alongside the switch ASIC, reducing electrical loss to 4 dB and power consumption to 9W per port, simplifying optical interconnect implementation [6] Group 2: Performance Metrics and Comparisons - Nvidia claims that by integrating the optical engine directly into the switch chip, its CPO technology improves power efficiency by 3.5 times and signal integrity by 64 times compared to traditional pluggable modules [8] - Broadcom's new TH6-Davisson switch, featuring 16 optical engines, achieves a power reduction of approximately 70% compared to previous models, supporting 800 Gb/s traffic with only 5.5W of power [15][14] Group 3: Industry Impact and Future Developments - The CPO technology is seen as a potential breakthrough in the industry, fundamentally redefining the boundaries of switches and enabling more efficient connections in AI clusters [20] - Broadcom is currently developing its fourth-generation CPO, aiming for a transmission speed of 400G per channel, indicating ongoing advancements in this technology [23] - Nvidia plans to introduce its CPO-based optical interconnect platform for Ethernet and InfiniBand technologies, with significant performance improvements expected for AI clusters [24][25]