Samtec showcased several high-performance, high-density active optical connector systems at DesignCon 2024. These were in addition to a booth full of Samtec Flyover® copper cable solutions rated at 224 and 112 Gbps PAM4 data rates, as well as RF test and measurement systems.
New CXL Over Fiber
CXL is based on the PCI Express specification physical and electrical interface. CXL enables cache coherency between the CPU and attached devices, such as accelerators, GPUs, or memory devices.
Emerging storage and memory use cases demand high performance, low latency, and coherency. Rack scale connectivity will define next-generation architectures, and CXL is the breakthrough CPU-to-device interconnect.
Samtec’s new CXL over optics proof of concept demonstrates these possibilities. In the video above, Joe Phillips shows you a CXL over fiber proof of concept solution.
An AMD Genoa platform hosts a Samtec FireFly™ add-in card. On the endpoint, another Samtec add-in card communicates with NVMe and a Micron CXL endpoint. The host and the endpoint are separated by 100 meters of OM4 multi-mode optical fiber.
A Samtec FireFly PCUO, a PCIe-over-fiber active optical cable assembly, is the focal interconnect on both add-in cards.
High-Density Active Optical Connector Systems
Another FireFly Optical solution, the ECUO series, is available in x4 and x12 designs. It incorporates OM3 multi-mode fiber and I available in a variety of End 2 options and heat sinks for various cooling processes.
ETUO is an Extended Temperature FireFly with a -40 ºC to +85 ºC range.
PCOA is a PCIe-Over-Fiber adaptor card that supports transparent and non-transparent bridging.
New Halo Future Proof Copper/Optical Cable Interconnect
Our new Halo™ system is another future-proof, next-gen optical solution for copper or optical interconnects. The video above shows the copper version.
A Multilane ML4035 BERT is generating a 112 Gbps PAM4 signal, of course, to verify the number of transmitted bits correctly received.
We see an excellent BER of e-11, and the channel loss is about 5 dB at 28 GHz.
Halo is capable of 112 Gbps PAM4 per lane, up to 16 channels, 8 channels bidirectional. The two-piece system is a low 6.5 mm profile and are designed to withstand high shock and vibration.
Still here? Below are a few blogs and videos about other Samtec demos and displays at DesignCon 2024.
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