Broadcom has made several announcements that focus on more widely using system on a chip (SOC) technology, integrating into home Wi-Fi 8 networks, supporting AI traffic, and enhancing fixed wireless access (FWA) technology in partnership with Samsung Electronics.
Broadcom’s new BCM68850 is a 50G ITU ITU-PON home gateway SoC. It features an integrated neural processing unit (NPU) and offers native Wi-Fi 8 compatibility. The device is deployed at the intelligent edge and provides a range of NPU-accelerated solutions across cable, PON, Wi-Fi and set-top box platforms.
“The BCM68850 is a defining milestone for global fiber networks; we are redefining the broadband edge as the central intelligence hub of the home,” Philip Radtke, Broadcom’s vice president of product marketing for the Wireless and Broadband Communications Division, said in a press release.
“This flagship SoC joins our established lineup of NPU-accelerated fiber, cable, set-top box, and Wi-Fi solutions, ensuring operators can efficiently deploy edge-intelligent broadband regardless of the access medium and extend that intelligence all the way to the edge.”
Broadcom also expanded its Wi-Fi 8 portfolio with the SOC Wi-Fi 8 BCM6772, BCM6774, and BCM6776 devices. The BCM6772 is the core foundation for Broadcom’s mass-market Ethernet routers, extenders, and repeaters. It features integrated 2×2 2.4-GHz and 2×2 5-GHz radios, a versatile memory controller (DDR4 and DDR5) and comes in a compact 15×15 mm FCBGA package,
The BCM6774 is optimized for high-volume ethernet routers and extenders. It includes integrated 2×2 2.4-GHz and 4×4 5-GHz radios, versatile memory controller (DDR4 & DDR5) and offers a compact 15×15 mm FCBGA package.
The BCM6776 is aimed at premium Ethernet tri-band routers and extenders (when paired with BCM6718). It features integrated 2×2 2.4-GHz & 4×4 5-GHz radios, offers dual PCIe Gen3 controllers, versatile memory controller (DDR4, DDR5 LPDDR4 and LPDDR5) and is housed in a compact 19×19 mm FCBGA package.
Finally, Broadcom announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics for the cost-optimized FWA reference platform featuring the Samsung B1320 5G modem and the Broadcom BCM6776 Wi-Fi 8 SoC.
The platform, which Broadcom called an industry-first, combines 3GPP Release 17 connectivity with the emerging Wi-Fi 8 (IEEE 802.11bn) standard.
Last October, Broadcom introduced the Thor Ultra, an 800G AI Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) that the company said could connect hundreds of thousands of XPUs to accommodate trillion-parameter AI workloads. The introduction came a week after the introduction of the Tomahawk 6-Davisson, a 102.4 Tbps Ethernet Switch with co-packaged optics.
In September, Charter’s Spectrum brand announced that it had collaborated with Broadcom to demonstrate a throughput of nearly 10 Gbps to a single Wi-Fi device. Broadcom and Charter full 6 GHz band with 125 MHz of spectrum in the 7.125–7.25 GHz band to enable the high throughput.
