Dubbed the BCM4908 processor includes a 28nm 1.8GHz ARM CPU alongside Broadcom’s network packet processor to deliver more than 5 Gbits/second of system data throughput.

This means that the CPU is free to run a variety of software on the router. It will support the increased speeds coming into the home through services such as Google Fiber using an interface for a 2.5 Gigabit/s Ethernet PHY.

Broadcom officials said routers can manage 3.5 Gbits/s combined speed when paired with the company’s wave2 5G WiFi MU-MIMO chip.

Manny Patel, director of marketing for wireless connectivity, said in a release that Broadcom was enabling OEMs to build more powerful home routers that address the increased bandwidth requirements needed to support the continued consumption of high-bandwidth content.

Additionally, the router processor supports tri-band 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi – three BCM4366 4x4 radios, each with an integrated CPU for host offload processing – to provide seven CPU cores with more than 9.6 GHz of CPU compute power.

By leaving the router CPU free from Wi-Fi processing, Broadcom expects its offering to go beyond smart home and enterprise to network attached storage. The company did not announce partner companies for its silicon, but said BCM4908 is currently shipping and will be in mass production at the end of the second quarter of 2016.