By Ed Cady, contributing editor Peripheral component interconnect express, or PCIe, has become the interface standard for connecting high-speed components, such as graphics, memory, and storage. Typically, PCIe interface signaling and physical layer implementation rely on printed circuit board assembly (PCBAs) and edge connectors. Several standardized and non-standardized cabling solutions are available that support a […]
How cable technology is evolving to meet high-performance networking
Persistent memory has become one key technology for the cloud as speed, efficiency, and volume at data centers advance. In high-performance computing, the cloud often requires data to be moved between multiple physical systems. Data may also be replicated for redundancy and protection, or it can be split across physical systems for performance. High-performance networking […]
Considerations for new datacenter, inside-the-box, twinaxial IO cables
New 50G, 100G, and 200G per lane internal copper twinaxial cable assembly solutions solve emerging DC/Cloud inside-the-box interconnect problems and new technology changes. Internal cable applications and high volume usages have also rapidly increased. For each new speed rate internal cable assembly product, design teams must closely review the detailed specifications for components, processes, and […]
IEEE 802.3 Ethernet next-gen study group holds successful webinar
IEEE 802.3’s progressing “Moving Beyond 400Gb/s Ethernet Study” group members held a highly interactive and successful video webinar in conjunction with Lightwave with an excellent question and answer sections. This was a 100+ page three-hour rich experience meet up with key observations, data, and current conclusions from various industry leaders. After the recent EA’s TEF, […]
Ethernet Alliance holds a successful Technical Exploration Forum
Ethernet’s Alliance Technical Exploration Forum was a very successful online video conference with an excellent question and answer sections. This was a 150+ page 10 hour rich experience meet up with perspectives of different industry leaders. A key consensus takeaway was: due to currently unattainable SerDes power & cooling practical limits, Co-Packaged Optical interconnects will […]
SFP, SFP-DD, QSFP, QSFP-DD & OSFP Pluggable interconnects – a 2021 update
The 21-year-old Pluggable interconnect family is now being used for new accelerator, AV, camera, machine vision, medical, memory, NVM, and proprietary interface links. New market segment expansion seems likely to continue with link shipments rising and healthy unit forecasting. New higher speed 106G and 112G per lane pluggable products will be coming out this year, […]
MicroQSFP, QSFPDD,OSFP interconnect systems chosen by IEEE
Just recently in Vancouver, the Ethernet IEEE-802.3cd Standards Committee voted yes simultaneously to include MicroQSFP, QSFP-DD and OSFP interconnect modules as MDI (media dependent interface) options. The remarkable singular vote, of 66 yes, 0 no, and 14 abstain, seemed to reflect the wide and deep need to support different types of new and established enterprise, […]
OSFP interconnect: what is it?
OSFP, Octal Small Formfactor Pluggable, is a very new module and interconnect system in development that is targeted to support 400-G optical data links inside datacenters, campuses and external metro long reach. The private consortium OSFP MSA group was founded by Google and is led by Arista Networks. This consortium already has more than 50 […]
New I/O standards use different lane count circuits to drive new connector use in DCs
InfiniBand is a very high-speed server fabric I/O network with various lane counts and connector/cabling specifications. The current high volume HPC and DataCenter installations are primarily using EDR 25.7G per lane interconnects. This is done using primarily a 4-lane option cable link between ToR switch and rack leaf server using the QSFP28 connector system. Although […]
New Gen-Z Interconnect Consortium launched
Gen-Z is a very new interconnect consortium that is focused on newer, advance memory, storage and accelerator architectures and devices. Gen-Z is based on the IEEE-802.3 physical layer specifications and external interconnects like SFP28 and QSFP28 connectors, cables and modules. Its first generation data transfer speed rate is 25Gbps per lane. 56GT/s and 112GT/s speed […]
