The new Arctica 3200xl open network switch from Penguin Computing is based on the Broadcom StrataXGS Trident II chipset. Introduction of the new switch adds 32-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet capability to the Arctica family. The switch also enables up to 96 servers and storage systems to be connected over 10 Gigabit Ethernet to a single Top-of-Rack switch while supporting 40 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks for aggregation. Forty Gigabit Ethernet (40GigE) ports available in the new switch alleviate I/O bottlenecks in congested storage servers. Used as Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), 40GigE connections aggregate traffic from multiple 10/40GigE Top-of-Rack switches. The switch also offers new high port count 10 Gigabit Ethernet options to support ultra-high density rack form factors, such as Penguin OpenHPC. Multiple switches and 4804x units can be used to span large non-blocking fabric topologies (Clos networks) to support High Performance Computing clusters. For data center and virtualization workloads, the switch provides wire speed VXLAN functionality to address the management and security concerns in large multi-tenant cloud deployments.
