Broadcom has begun shipping its latest high-performance networking chip, the Tomahawk 6, designed specifically to meet the growing demands of artificial intelligence infrastructure, the company announced Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Ram Velaga, Senior Vice President at Broadcom, revealed that the Tomahawk 6 delivers twice the performance of its predecessor and introduces enhanced traffic management features, making it significantly more efficient for large-scale AI applications.

As AI models continue to grow in complexity and size, the need for ultra-fast, reliable networking in data centers has become critical. AI systems often require massive clusters of chips—ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands—to function effectively. The Tomahawk series, widely used in data centers, plays a key role in connecting these chips to form unified computing systems.

“With the Tomahawk 6, we’re enabling the construction of data centers that can support over 100,000 GPUs, and soon, we’ll be looking at million-GPU facilities,” Velaga stated. He emphasized that such scale demands both raw speed and intelligent network design.

Unlike rival Nvidia, which utilizes InfiniBand technology for AI networking, Broadcom continues to rely on Ethernet, a long-standing industry standard. Velaga argues that Ethernet remains a robust and scalable option for even the most complex AI workloads. “You don’t need exotic technologies—Ethernet can handle it all,” he said.

A key innovation in the Tomahawk 6 is the adoption of chiplet architecture, marking the first time Broadcom has used this modular design in the Tomahawk line. By integrating multiple chiplets into a single package, the new design doubles the silicon real estate, enhancing performance and flexibility. Chiplets have already been embraced by other major semiconductor players like AMD.

Manufactured using TSMC’s advanced 3-nanometer process, the Tomahawk 6 reflects Broadcom’s commitment to staying at the cutting edge of semiconductor design.

As AI continues to transform industries, Broadcom’s latest networking innovation positions it as a central player in enabling the infrastructure behind the next wave of intelligent technologies.