Broadcom announces automotive IEEE 802.3ch multigigabit PHYs and multilayer switches with MACsec support

Broadcom Inc. announced the availability of its automotive AEC-Q100 compliant multigigabit Ethernet PHY transceiver family and multilayer Ethernet switch family with 802.1AE MACsec support, the BCM8989X and BCM8957X, respectively. The BCM8989X is IEEE 802.3ch standard-compliant automotive 10G/5G/2.5GBASE-T1 MACsec PHY, while the BCM8957X is automotive L2/L3 switch with MACsec support and PHY interfaces supporting data rates of 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Both device families are designed to address the growing need of in-vehicle data security, high bandwidth networking with flexible multigigabit interfaces, and time-sensitive networking (TSN).

With Ethernet being the de-facto networking standard for automotive applications, MACsec has become an important solution to help secure data communications between Ethernet nodes in a car and guard against cyber attacks and data breaches. Leveraging Broadcom’s proven MACsec technology from high-speed networking products, the BCM8989X and BCM8957X are equipped with state-of-the-art MACsec that can be configured to support high-speed interconnects for in-vehicle networking. In addition, these devices come with built-in BroadR-Secure™ functionality to further enhance data transmission security by enabling customers to authenticate each packet using secure keys.

As new technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) make inroads into the automotive industry, the amount of data transmitted both inside and outside of the connected car is expected to increase substantially. High bandwidth networking will be needed to enable a growing number of sensors and high-resolution cameras for autonomous driving. Equally important, low latency or real time communications will play a key role in addressing time-sensitive applications like safety-critical vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. As such, multigigabit Ethernet PHYs and high bandwidth multilayer switches are essential in handling the increased data traffic while being able to securely transfer large amounts of critical data across the network for accurate real time decision making.

Product Highlights

BCM8989X

• Industry’s 1^st IEEE 802.ch compliant multigigabit PHY supporting 2.5G, 5G and 10G
• Integrated 802.1AE MACsec with 128/256-bit AES encryption
• High speed PCIe & XFI interfaces optimized for connecting to switch IC or host SoC

BCM8957X

• Industry’s first automotive switch with integrated 100BASE-T1 and 1000BASE-T1 802.1AE MACsec PHYs
• Enhanced L2/L3 switching addressing new standardized Automotive Ethernet speeds
  • Supports external 802.3cg 10BASE-T1S PHYs
  • Supports external 802.3ch multigigabit PHYs
• High speed PCIe interface for SRIOV virtualization allowing OEMs to reduce overhead of multicore SoCs

Availability

Samples of the BCM8989X and BCM8957X are available now. Please contact your local Broadcom sales representative for samples and pricing.