Report: Merchant Silicon Units Dominate The DC Switching Market
IHS Markit has forecasted that merchant silicon shipped in DC Ethernet switches will reach 63% of all units shipped in CY22, proprietary/custom silicon to top 30%, and programmable silicon to account for 7%.
Broadcom is the undisputed leader in merchant silicon; its chips are present in all segments of the market from general purpose and purpose-built to bare metal switches, and in all port speeds from 1GE to 400GE. “Proprietary or custom silicon vendors are mainly traditional switch vendors, but many are expanding their portfolios to include non-proprietary 3rd party commodity silicon", says Devan Adams, MBA, principal analyst, cloud and data center switching, IHS Markit.