Edgecore switch based on Facebook's Wedge 100 design

07 June 2017

Edgecore Networks’ Wedge100-32X is a commercial product based on the Wedge100 design submitted to the Open Compute Project.

It was originally developed by Facebook as a 32 x 100GbE top-of-rack switch optimised for web-scale data centres. 

Edgecore’s parent company, Accton Technology, performed the design validation for Facebook.

As well as manufacturing the Wedge100 for the company’s deployment, Edgecore now offers the switch as a fully supported commercial product to enable capacity to be increased using 25G and 100G networks.

According to EdgeCore, the Wedge 100 provides 32 QSFP28 ports that can each run at 100GbE/40GbE, or as 4 x 25GbE/4 x 10GbE/2 x 50GbE through breakout cables. 

The bare-metal TOR switch can be used for data centre fabrics, and is compatible with 19-inch rack or 21-inch Open Rack systems with an Open Rack Switch Adapter.

It is also said to offer line-rate Layer 2 or Layer 3 forwarding of 3.2Tbps full duplex, and has hot-swappable, load-sharing, redundant AC PSUs or 12V DC PSUs.

The Wedge 100 comes pre-loaded with Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) for automated loading of compatible open source and commercial NOS offerings.

EdgeCore adds that the switch’s design is based on Broadcom’s BCM56960 Tomahawk 3.2Tbps chipset, while its subsystem is the COM-E CPU module, based on the Intel Atom E3800 x86 processor.

According to the firm, the use of this standard CPU system, coupled with the baseboard management controller on the main board enables the device to be provisioned and managed with tools similar to the used by data centre operators for their server and application environments.