Broadcom Introduces the World's First Quantum-Safe Gen 8 128G SAN Switch Portfolio

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 19, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO), a global leader in semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions, today announced the availability of the Brocade X8 Directors and Brocade G820 56-port switch, the industry's first 128G Fibre Channel platforms designed for today's mission-critical workloads and enterprise AI applications. Brocade Gen 8 Fibre Channel safeguards storage for the quantum era and automates infrastructure management through embedded SAN AI technology.

"Brocade has been the trusted leader in Fibre Channel for more than 30 years. Our new Gen 8 Fibre Channel platforms advance the enterprise storage industry by securing storage networks against emerging quantum-era threats and by utilizing embedded SAN AI technology to automate application infrastructure management," said Dennis Makishima, vice president and general manager, Brocade Storage Networking, Broadcom. "These new 128G platforms establish a robust foundation for mission-critical and enterprise AI workloads."

The launch of the Brocade Gen 8 portfolio underscores Broadcom's unmatched leadership and innovation in Fibre Channel technology. The Brocade X8 directors form the core of large, scalable networks, while the Brocade G820 mid-range switch can be flexibly deployed as an edge or top-of-rack switch. The Gen 8 portfolio combines 128G performance, quantum-safe security, and AI-powered autonomy to enable the most robust and secure network for modern data centers.

Enterprises today are navigating a more sophisticated spectrum of threats with the advent of AI and quantum computing. With quantum-resistant 256-bit encryption and other post-quantum cryptography algorithms, the Brocade Gen 8 portfolio is designed to be quantum-safe, protecting sensitive data and critical infrastructure from future quantum computers. Brocade Gen 8 technology further hardens the SAN by minimizing the attack surface through strong access controls and limiting privileges, using a principle of least privilege architecture.

Brocade Gen 8 modernizes SAN management with the introduction of AI-powered autonomy that learns, adapts, and responds to changing environments. SAN Fabric Intelligence eliminates time-consuming manual processes, and provides a complete, end-to-end visibility for all connected devices and components within the SAN including virtual machines. This holistic fabric view highlights and drills down into key points of interest to accelerate troubleshooting and ensure optimal performance.

The Brocade Adaptive Traffic Optimizer feature learns and adapts to changing application demands with dynamic load balancing across performance groups and virtual channels to maintain critical application performance. Additionally, Adaptive Traffic Optimizer can help avoid application performance impacts by automatically isolating traffic that is adversely impacting other flows.

Brocade X8 Directors: Build a Scalable Fabric with Uncompromising Security

This modern, highly-scalable Gen 8 director is a modular platform, purpose-built to power and secure large-scale storage environments, supporting growth, workload consolidation, and reliable operations. With up to 384×128G ports, the Brocade X8 Director delivers exceptional bandwidth and throughput required to support growing numbers of devices, applications, and workloads without compromising performance. High bandwidth and ultra-low latency eliminate I/O bottlenecks, delivering maximum performance for high-transaction workloads.

This performance headroom enables organizations to consolidate workloads onto fewer systems. To further maximize utilization, up to 128 UltraScale ICL links enable the director to scale efficiently while preserving device ports for connectivity. The Brocade X8 Director offers flexible deployment options and multiprotocol support, enabling organizations to optimize resources to meet the evolving requirements of next-generation storage and servers.

Brocade G820 Switch: Unleash Performance with Uncompromising Security

This high-performance 1U Fibre Channel switch is purpose-built to meet the demanding needs of modern data centers. With 56 128G SFP+ ports and unmatched low latency, this switch delivers exceptional bandwidth and throughput, making it ideal for fueling enterprise AI and modern workloads. With its compact design, the Brocade G820 Switch enables efficient use of rack space while providing the scalability necessary for future growth.

Availability

Both the Brocade X8 Directors and the Brocade G820 switch are available now. Please contact your local Broadcom sales representative for more information. OEM partners will begin shipping throughout the next couple of quarters. Click here to learn more about Brocade Fibre Channel networking solutions.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) is a global technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies a broad range of semiconductor, enterprise software and security solutions. Broadcom's category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including cloud, data center, networking, broadband, wireless, storage, industrial, and enterprise software. Our solutions include service provider and enterprise networking and storage, mobile device and broadband connectivity, mainframe, cybersecurity, and private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Broadcom is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

Broadcom, the pulse logo, and Connecting everything are among the trademarks of Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc., and/or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Industry Quotes

Travis Vigil, Senior Vice President, ISG Product Management, Dell Technologies

"The Connectrix B-Series Gen 8 128G Fibre Channel portfolio, available to quote now from Dell Technologies, represents a significant leap forward in performance, security, fabric intelligence for enterprise storage environments. Gen 8 technology with our storage portfolio delivers unmatched security, reliability and scalability for mission-critical workloads. Looking ahead, this collaboration will continue to drive innovation and help ensure our customers are equipped for the future of intelligent, autonomous infrastructure."

Marcus Schneider, Deputy Head Global Portfolio Management, Fsas Technologies

"The launch of Brocade Gen 8 Fibre Channel shows continued market leadership, bringing innovative solutions that empower customers to unlock productivity and performance in today's data centers, while serving as a building block for the demanding artificial intelligence initiatives in the Enterprise. By leveraging these new platforms, organizations can stay ahead of their competition in a rapidly evolving market as they benefit from the reliability and security they expect from Brocade Fibre Channel."

Zhang Tao, Senior Vice President of H3C Group, Chairman of the Technical Committee, and President of the Cloud, Computing, and Storage Product Line, H3C

"H3C has long been guided by its mission to "build a robust storage foundation for an intelligent world"— a vision we proudly share with Brocade in our enduring partnership. The launch of Brocade's Gen 8 128G Fibre Channel platform brings unprecedented performance and intelligent management capabilities to enterprise storage networks. When integrated with H3C's high-performance storage systems and comprehensive end-to-end solutions, this collaboration creates seamless synergy across compute, storage, and networking layers — delivering reliable and efficient infrastructure to support AI training, mission-critical workloads, and data-intensive applications. Looking ahead, H3C remains committed to partnering with Brocade to drive innovation in data infrastructure for the intelligent era. By leveraging best-in-class product portfolios and a thriving ecosystem of alliances, we empower our customers to accelerate their digital and intelligent transformation journeys."

Octavian Tanase, Chief Product Officer, Hitachi Vantara

"Hitachi Vantara is excited to see the introduction of the latest Brocade Gen 8 Fibre Channel, marking a major milestone in the evolution of Fibre Channel storage area networks (SAN). Brocade Gen 8 complements our VSP One data platform, allowing customers to leverage industry-best performance, resiliency and security in their hybrid cloud infrastructure. We congratulate our partner Brocade and look forward to delivering this powerful new joint capability to our customers."

Jim O'Dorisio, SVP & GM, HPE Storage

"AI is pushing data infrastructure to its limits, and the network must evolve with it. By combining the new Brocade Gen 8 platform with HPE's AI-ready storage, we're giving enterprises a foundation that's faster, smarter, and inherently more secure. Together, we're enabling customers to protect data against future threats while delivering the low-latency performance modern workloads demand."

Sam Werner, General Manager, IBM Storage

"IBM looks forward to collaborating with Broadcom to deliver the next era of operational resiliency and security for our clients. Our FlashSystem storage arrays, paired with the new Brocade Gen 8 platforms, deliver enterprise-class performance, cyber protection, and policy-based high availability to safeguard our clients' data. Together, these solutions provide quantum-safe encrypted connections that operate at speeds up to 128G over long distances, giving clients a seamless, resilient foundation to keep their operations running through any disruption."

Scott Tease, Vice President and General Manager AI and HPC, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Lenovo

"Brocade and Lenovo are both committed to helping organizations modernize their infrastructure and safeguard mission-critical data with confidence. The launch of Brocade Gen 8 SAN marks an exciting milestone in our partnership – one that reinforces Lenovo's commitment to delivering performance, protection, and simplicity for our solutions. Paired with our ThinkSystem Storage and Compute solutions, this completes an integrated solution to deliver enterprise-grade performance, scalability, and quantum-safe resilience."

Ivan Iannaccone, Vice President of Product Management, Shared Infrastructure, NetApp

"As one of the first storage companies to embed post-quantum cryptography into its storage systems, NetApp is committed to building resilient data infrastructure that is secure by design. Brocade's innovations to protect its switches against quantum threats reaffirms our shared values. Customers that leverage the Gen 8 Brocade switches with NetApp solutions will benefit from secure, high performance storage networking for mission-critical SAN and enterprise AI operations."



Cherry Wang, Vice General Manager, TG Stor

"As a longstanding partner of Brocade, we are thrilled to endorse the new Gen 8 portfolio, featuring the X8 Director and G820 switches. These next-generation solutions mark a significant advancement in data center networking. The X8 Director delivers unmatched performance and scalability, while the G820 offers exceptional bandwidth and throughput. Together, they form the ideal networking foundation for our own next-generation all-flash storage systems — engineered with compute-storage separation, high-speed processors, and end-to-end NVMe to fully harness the power of Gen 8. This powerful synergy enables a truly optimized infrastructure, delivering uncompromising reliability for our customers' most mission-critical operations and unlocking breakthrough performance. We are proud to collaborate with Brocade in bringing this end-to-end innovation to market."

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