Broadcom

Broadcom


BCM12xx, BCM14xx

Targets: Communication & Wired, General Purpose, Mobile & Wireless, Security

Broadcom manufactures its family of dual- and quad-core processors, including the BCM1255, BCM1280, BCM1455, and BCM1480, with 90-nm CMOS process technology, and it bases them on the field-proven multi-core architecture of the BCM1250. The memory-controller design addresses bandwidth and efficient channel usage. The controller supports DDR-400 and DDR2-800 for a peak bandwidth of 100 Gbps, supporting higher data-plane-forwarding performance. Configurable as two 64-bit wide channels or four 32-bit wide channels for improved memory usage, the memory controller supports as much as 16-Gbytes of memory with 1-Gbit DRAM technology. The memory controller works closely with the on-chip L2 cache, scalable to 1-Mbyte to provide a high-performance memory system.

Broadcom's SoC architecture supports high I/O bandwidth and flexibility by integrating three independently configurable 19.2-Gbps I/O ports that connect to the processor cores via an on-chip, 256-Gbps cut-through switch. Designers can configure each port to operate in SPI 4.2 or 16-bit HyperTransport mode, running up to 600-MHz DDR. Broadcom's HyperTransport implementation is Rev 1.1-compliant and enables the support of not only memory and I/O traffic but also packet traffic over the HyperTransport interface.