One of the most important trends in network equipment is the increased availability of “merchant silicon”, chips designed to implement common network functions such as switching, routing, and route determination. It is this development that has led to the increased interest in “white box” or open-model technology in networks. While there are several vendors who offer these chips, Broadcom has been a market leader, and they have recently released a new behemoth in their Tomahawk 6 swit...
