Tomahawk 6 / Davisson by Broadcom: status and timeline

Tomahawk 6 / Davisson

Tomahawk 6 is an Ethernet switch ASIC delivering 102.4 Tbps capacity, double any competitor. The Davisson variant integrates co-packaged optics for lower power and latency.

DeployStage 4 of 5

In production since June 2025; Davisson CPO variant in sampling (announced October 2025).

Updated 8 Oct 2025Checked 10 Oct0 updates this week

Milestones

Next · Davisson mass production ramp

Tomahawk 5 in high volume2023Complete.
Tomahawk 6 announced and shipping beginsJun 2025Complete.
TH6-Davisson (CPO) announced and sampling startsOct 2025Complete.
Davisson mass production rampTarget 2026Current milestone.
TSMC COUPE platform mass productionTarget 2026Not yet reached.

Most important updates

Upcoming

2026Davisson mass production ramp (next)
2026TSMC COUPE platform mass production
2026OpenAI's custom AI processor deployment

Current obstacles

CPO manufacturing yieldSilicon-photonics integration at scale is new. Yield must improve and cost must fall to compete with pluggable modules.
Competing with custom hyperscaler siliconGoogle, Meta and others design in-house. Broadcom must prove cost and flexibility advantages to win market share.

Physics limits

Power dissipation ceiling256 lanes × ~0.4W each = 100W+ serial I/O power alone. Thermal limits prevent adding more lanes without exceeding 150-200W total.
Optical fiber capacityAt 102.4 Tbps, hundreds of fiber strands are needed, raising data-center cabling complexity.
Latency vs. buffering trade-offLarge buffers reduce packet loss but raise latency; small buffers cut latency but increase tail loss. AI workloads need both.

How it works

3 parts

SerDes Lanes

High-speed serial links

Each SerDes converts parallel data to high-speed serial and back. TH6 has 256 lanes; each copper lane runs 400 Gbps for 102.4 Tbps total.

Switch Fabric

Cross-bar routing with buffering

Incoming packets route through a cross-bar to output ports. Buffers handle congestion; AI-aware routing reduces CPU overhead in collective operations.

Co-Packaged Optics

Optical transceiver on the die

TH6-Davisson integrates optical transmit/receive on the switch die using TSMC's COUPE platform. This cuts power and latency by eliminating separate modules.

Spec sheet

Spec	Tomahawk 6 / Davisson
Total switching capacity	102.4 Tbps^R (reported)
SerDes lanes	256 lanes^R (reported)
Per-lane rate (copper variant)	400 Gbps^R (reported)
Per-lane rate (CPO variant)	200 Gbps^R (reported)
Power reduction vs. pluggable optics	~50%^R (reported)

^R reported by the company

Update log

2 updates

Wed 8 Oct 2025

Major: Broadcom announces TH6-Davisson, first co-packaged optics switch at 102.4 Tbps, entering samplingPressHardware

Jun 2025

Major: Broadcom ships Tomahawk 6 Ethernet switch, the first 102.4 Tbps switch on the marketPressHardware

About Broadcom

The team behind Tomahawk 6 / Davisson

Broadcom

Ethernet switches, co-packaged optics, AI

Broadcom designs semiconductors and infrastructure software for data centers and networks. It dominates Ethernet switch silicon, shipping Tomahawk 6 (102.4 Tbps) with co-packaged optics. Partnering with OpenAI to develop 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators deploying from 2026.

Tomahawk 6 delivers 102.4 Tbps switching capacity, double competing Ethernet switches.
The CPO variant (TH6-Davisson) began shipping October 2025, integrating optical with switch silicon for 50% power savings.
OpenAI partnership to co-develop 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators for deployment from 2026, full rollout by end 2029.

broadcom.com (opens broadcom.com)Company profile →

Founded: 199135 yrs
Headquarters: United States
Status: Public
Valuation: public
Staff: ~37,000Jan 2024
Works in: ComputingPhotonics & interconnect
Coverage: 1 program · 3 updateslatest 13 Oct 2025checked 10 Oct
Customers: Google Cloud (opens cloud.google.com)
Partners: OpenAI (opens openai.com)TSMC (opens tsmc.com)
People: Hock Tan (opens en.wikipedia.org)President and CEO

Spec

Tomahawk 6 / Davisson

Total switching capacity

102.4 Tbps^R (reported)

SerDes lanes

256 lanes^R (reported)

Per-lane rate (copper variant)

400 Gbps^R (reported)

Per-lane rate (CPO variant)

200 Gbps^R (reported)

Power reduction vs. pluggable optics

~50%^R (reported)