ZDNet covers a new silicon standard for network gear to use less energy and be greener in the data center.

Green moves to the datacenter network silicon level

By David Chernicoff | October 5, 2010, 9:27am PDT

Summary

Low-level energy savings across your corporate networks becomes a hardware possibility with the newly ratified IEEE standard.

With the ratification of the IEEE Std. 802.3az-2010 Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard the energy savings mantra of the green movement dives deep into the underlying infrastructure of your datacenter networks. The new standard is intended to allow energy savings at the network silicon level by reducing power demand when there are periods of reduced link utilization.

Broadcom announced the Silicon to support the 802.3az standard.

Broadcom Corporation today announced that it has the industry's broadest portfolio of available silicon solutions supporting the newly ratified IEEE Std. 802.3az-2010 Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard.
This extensive portfolio includes switch silicon that spans entry level unmanaged to enterprise and metro class switches; single, quad and octal Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) physical layer devices (PHYs); dual and quad 10GbE PHYs; 10/100 and 1GbE controllers, and 10GbE converged network interface controllers (C-NICs).

Broadcom EEE-compliant products offer energy savings of up to 70 percent or greater and provide customers with end-to-end silicon and software solutions that enable faster deployment of energy efficient networks.