Microchip Technology has announced a new fan-out switch for next-generation AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, opening up new possibilities for data center designers.

Microchip announced on the 14th its industry-first 3-nanometer (3nm) process-based PCIe Gen 6 switch family, 'Switchtec™ Gen 6'.

This product is a fan-out switch with ultra-low latency, high bandwidth, and advanced security features, dramatically improving the performance and scalability of cloud and hyperscale data centers.

Switchtec Gen 6 supports up to 160 lanes and delivers 64 GT/s of bandwidth per lane, double that of PCIe 5.0. This enables high-speed, bottleneck-free connections between CPUs, GPUs, SoCs, AI accelerators, and storage, stably supplying the data pipeline essential for AI workloads.

This product provides an advanced security environment by adopting hardware root of trust, secure boot, and post-quantum secure encryption technology that complies with CNSA 2.0. This meets the increasingly important data protection needs of AI and cloud infrastructure.

Switchtec Gen 6 enables direct connections between GPUs within a server rack, minimizing signal loss and maintaining the low latency required by AI fabrics. PCIe 6.0's FLIT mode, lightweight FEC system, and dynamic resource allocation enhance the efficiency and reliability of small packet transmissions, increasing overall throughput and reducing effective latency.

This product features 20 ports and 10 stacks, supporting hot-plug and surprise-plug controllers, non-transparent bridging (NTB), and multicast functions. Its integrated MIPS processor, diverse I/O interfaces, and x8 and x16 branching options ensure design flexibility. Furthermore, the ChipLink diagnostic tool and PM61160-KIT evaluation kit enable efficient debugging and analysis from design to deployment.

Switchtec Gen 6 PCIe switches are sampling now to customers who meet certain requirements, and are available for purchase through Microchip sales representatives and authorized distributors.

“Innovations in the AI era are transforming data center architectures to a pull-based architecture, and Switchtec Gen 6 provides the most robust and energy-efficient interconnect solution at the center of this transformation,” said Brian McCarson, vice president of Microchip’s Data Center Solutions business unit.