Network traffic growth is driven by many factors, including the transition of wireless carrier networks to 3G and 4G speeds; dramatic growth in the number and capacity of endpoint devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers; demand for greater bandwidth for consumer Internet users for video streaming; and the need for enterprise cloud computing.
Last November, Brocade claimed the world's largest single-site deployment of 100 GbE in a research institute--Janelia Farm Research Campus--improving efficiency by 50%. Two months ago, Cisco introduced 100-GbE capabilities on its Nexus 7000 switch line for data center and service provider networks
Broadcom cites industry research that by 2015, 1 million minutes of video content will traverse the network every second; that between 2011 and 2015, global mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold; and that the number of devices connected to IP networks will become two times larger than the world’s population by 2015.
While service provider networks need a 10-fold increase in speed from 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps, service provider network resources aren’t growing at the same rate, says Tausanovitch. "They’re not getting an order of magnitude more rack space in the service provider central office, and they’re certainly not getting an order of magnitude more budget or 10 times more power, so the service providers are being squeezed."
According to news reports, other NPU vendors that have introduced 100-Gbps processors include Xelerated, of Sweden, which announced production of its HX family of processors in September 2011. PMC-Sierra introduced a 100-Gbps processor in January 2011. Alcatel-Lucent, meanwhile, introduced a 400-Gbps NPU in June of last year.
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