ENGINEERING
Molex QSFP+ AOC Achieves Up To 56 Gbps Over 4KM
Molex Incorporated announces the availability of its QSFP+ low power 56 Gbps Fourteen Data Rate Active Optical Cable (AOC) which delivers a reliable and less costly solution for aggregated data rates up to 56 Gbps over reaches up to 4 km at Super Computing 2012, November 10-16 in Salt Lake City, UT, Molex booth 3745. The QSFP+ 56 Gbps AOC integrated cable requires less than 1 W per cable, and provides the flexibility of traditional optical modules by interfacing to systems via a standard Multiple Source Agreement QSFP (Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable) connector.
“The QSFP+ 56 Gbps AOC solution from Molex provides up to 4 km of reach yet uses less than 1 W of power,” states Brent Hatfield, product manager, Molex. “As data centers and scalable HPC clusters become larger and more distributed, Molex singlemode solution provides customers with a lower-cost alternative that can interconnect at medium range distances at a fraction of long range optics costs. This also provides customers with a clear path to speed upgrades without having to continuously upgrade their structured cabling, and the standard QSFP+ port is an economical, readily available interconnect to support those requirements.”
Featuring four bi-directional optical data links per end, each operating at data rates from 1.0 to 14.0 Gbps, Fourteen Data Rate (FDR) AOC cables from Molex are compatible with multiple protocols including InfiniBand FDR, 10Gb Ethernet, SAS 2.0 and 3.0 (6 and 12 Gbps), Fibre Channel (8 and 10 Gbps). A low Bit Error Rate of 10e-18 errors provides increased data reliability and a robust link compared to standard transceivers with 10e-15 errors per link. The cables are also available in a low loss pigtail version, which allows customers to install the singlemode fiber separately and connect to the pigtail version to avoid constant high-cost cable upgrades as bandwidth increases.
The 56 Gbps AOC cables from Molex are available in lengths up to 4 km (2.49 miles) for optimal design flexibility. The singlemode fiber technology provides a longer reach than copper and multimode fiber solutions in data center and campus environments. The firmware is field flashable via a I2C bus so cables can be reflashed while in the host system.