Wedge-16X - 16x 40G QSFP+ Data Center Switch

Product Detail

The Edge-Core Wedge-16X is the inaugural commercial product based on Facebook’s Wedge design. This design was created by Facebook as a 16x40GbE Top-of-Rack switch, specifically optimized for web-scale data centers. The design was then submitted to the Open Compute Project.

Accton Technology, the parent company of Edge-Core, was responsible for the design validation for Facebook and also manufactures the Wedge for Facebook’s deployment. Edge-Core has now made the Wedge-16X available as a hardware development kit. This allows customers to develop software applications for the switch and assess the Wedge-16X for potential deployment in their own data center networks.

The Wedge-16X switch comes with sixteen QSFP ports. Each of these can operate at 40GbE, or as 4x10GBE through the use of breakout cables. The Wedge design is built on the Broadcom BCM56850 Trident II 1.28 Tbps switch silicon. The CPU sub-system of the Wedge is the OCP-standard Panther+ Microserver module, which is based on the Intel Atom C2550 x86 processor.

The use of this standard CPU system, in conjunction with the BMC (baseband management processor) on the main Wedge board, enables the Wedge-16X to be provisioned and managed using similar tools that data center operators use for their server and application environments, provided the appropriate software is used.

The Wedge-16X switch is available as a hardware development kit. This includes the bare-metal switch with firmware that provides diagnostics and OpenBMC functions. The Wedge-16X is also compatible with the FBOSS agent open-source software, which has been contributed by Facebook to the OCP.