• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

MaxLinear's 8-port 2.5 Gbps Switch is Tiny Single-chip Solution

TheLostSwede

News Editor
Joined
Nov 11, 2004
Messages
17,771 (2.42/day)
Location
Sweden
System Name Overlord Mk MLI
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Motherboard Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 SE with offsets
Memory 32GB Team T-Create Expert DDR5 6000 MHz @ CL30-34-34-68
Video Card(s) Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phantom GS
Storage 1TB Solidigm P44 Pro, 2 TB Corsair MP600 Pro, 2TB Kingston KC3000
Display(s) Acer XV272K LVbmiipruzx 4K@160Hz
Case Fractal Design Torrent Compact
Audio Device(s) Corsair Virtuoso SE
Power Supply be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 850 W
Mouse Logitech G502 Lightspeed
Keyboard Corsair K70 Max
Software Windows 10 Pro
Benchmark Scores https://valid.x86.fr/yfsd9w
TPU managed to get an early sneak peek of MaxLinear's recently announced 8-port 2.5 Gbps switch IC, ahead of Computex official start tomorrow. The MXL86280 is going to bring some serious competition to the 2.5 Gbps switch market, as thanks to it being a single chip solution that integrates the Ethernet MAC and PHY, costs can be kept lower than competing two chip solutions that have a separate MAC and PHY. Although we weren't giving exact pricing, we were told that the MXL86280 should allow for more affordable 2.5 Gbps switches than those available in the market today, but not quite as affordable as the equivalent Gigabit switch.

MaxLinear also appears to have been fortunate with their chip design, as everything was working at the first tape-out, which is less common than you'd think when it comes to advanced chips The MXL86280 will be the first in what is expected to be a series of 2.5 Gbps switch solutions from MaxLinear, as the company is planning to release 5- and 6-port solutions in the future, which the company is hoping to win business in the router market space with. The test board that the company will have on display during Computex also features a pair of 2.5 Gbps SFP+ ports, which should be ideal for those with older 2.5 Gbps routers, cable modems or GPON equipment that only has fibre outputs. That said, the exact design of retail products might differ, so we'll have to wait and see what kind of products launch next year based on the MXL86280.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
4,625 (0.92/day)
Have they published the datasheet for chipset? Would love to see more 2.5Gbps switches on market.
 

TheLostSwede

News Editor
Joined
Nov 11, 2004
Messages
17,771 (2.42/day)
Location
Sweden
System Name Overlord Mk MLI
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Motherboard Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master
Cooling Noctua NH-D15 SE with offsets
Memory 32GB Team T-Create Expert DDR5 6000 MHz @ CL30-34-34-68
Video Card(s) Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phantom GS
Storage 1TB Solidigm P44 Pro, 2 TB Corsair MP600 Pro, 2TB Kingston KC3000
Display(s) Acer XV272K LVbmiipruzx 4K@160Hz
Case Fractal Design Torrent Compact
Audio Device(s) Corsair Virtuoso SE
Power Supply be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 850 W
Mouse Logitech G502 Lightspeed
Keyboard Corsair K70 Max
Software Windows 10 Pro
Benchmark Scores https://valid.x86.fr/yfsd9w
Have they published the datasheet for chipset? Would love to see more 2.5Gbps switches on market.
It's not launching until early 2024, so no, they haven't.
 
Joined
Apr 18, 2019
Messages
2,397 (1.15/day)
Location
Olympia, WA
System Name Sleepy Painter
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard Asus TuF Gaming X570-PLUS/WIFI
Cooling FSP Windale 6 - Passive
Memory 2x16GB F4-3600C16-16GVKC @ 16-19-21-36-58-1T
Video Card(s) MSI RX580 8GB
Storage 2x Samsung PM963 960GB nVME RAID0, Crucial BX500 1TB SATA, WD Blue 3D 2TB SATA
Display(s) Microboard 32" Curved 1080P 144hz VA w/ Freesync
Case NZXT Gamma Classic Black
Audio Device(s) Asus Xonar D1
Power Supply Rosewill 1KW on 240V@60hz
Mouse Logitech MX518 Legend
Keyboard Red Dragon K552
Software Windows 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSC 1809 17763.1757
I'm impressed.
Reminds me the first time I held an Intel i210T in my hands.
The actual chip was so much smaller than the previous generation(s) of Ethernet PHY, and many external board components were integral in the chip.
 
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
3,606 (2.49/day)
Location
Slovenia
Processor i5-6600K
Motherboard Asus Z170A
Cooling some cheap Cooler Master Hyper 103 or similar
Memory 16GB DDR4-2400
Video Card(s) IGP
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Display(s) 2x Oldell 24" 1920x1200
Case Bitfenix Nova white windowless non-mesh
Audio Device(s) E-mu 1212m PCI
Power Supply Seasonic G-360
Mouse Logitech Marble trackball, never had a mouse
Keyboard Key Tronic KT2000, no Win key because 1994
Software Oldwin
Does it play nice with the buggy variants of Intel i225 and i226?

I mean, I understand a chip can't fix what's wrong at the other end of the wire, but maybe the designers can use a few drops of magic sauce and, if an Intel chip is somehow detected at the other end, do something to reduce the probability of dropped connections. Limit the data rate to less than 2.5 Gbit/s, or something.
 
Top