Editor’s Note: On September 30th of this year, the IEEE ratified IEEE Std. 802.3az-2010. As an amendment to the IEEE 802.3 base standard, 802.3az-2010 specifies the technology and requirements for the development of Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) components and systems utilizing 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T, 1000BASE-KX, 10GBASE-T, 10GBASE-KX4 and 10GBASE-KR interconnects, while also creating a lower voltage 10 Mbit/s connection: 10BASE-Te.
Right after the ratification, Broadcom introduced a portfolio of EEE-compatible silicon, including switch silicon that spans entry level unmanaged to enterprise and metro class switches; single, quad and octal Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) physical layer devices (PHYs); dual and quad 10GbE PHYs; 10/100 and 1GbE controllers, and 10GbE converged network interface controllers (C-NICs). A full list of those devices can be found here: Broadcom EEE Silicon Lineup.
At EETimes’ request, Broadcom also updated a 2009 paper to reflect the ratified amendment. That updated paper is presented here. In it, Wael Diab, technical director for Broadcom’s office of the CTO working on technical strategy for Broadcom’s Infrastructure Networking Group (ING) helps you understand:
The difference between traditional and next-generation networks; what EEE really means; EEE’s applicability to your next design; Broadcom’s position relative to the EEE initiative.
View the full document as a PDF here.