Our friends at HiTech Global introduced a new Xilinx® Kintex® UltraScale™ half size PCIe development board.
Inspired by the presidential debates to ask probing questions, I spoke with Saeid Mousavi, VP of Product Development, from Hi Tech Global about the new board.
Samtec: Saied, tell us about the HiTech Global HTG-816 Network card.
Saeid: The HTG-K816 is populated with Xilinx Kintex UltraScale 035, 040, or 060 FPGA and provides access to eight lanes of PCI Express Gen 3, two independent banks of 72-bit DDR4 memory components (5GB), and front panel Z-Ray™ interface for hosting high-speed mezzanine cards. The Z-RAY™ port is populated with up to 16 GTH serial transceivers of the onboard FPGA along with power (12V/5A, 3.3V/16A, & VCCIO/1A), differential clock, and control signals (single-ended and I2C I/Os).
The Z-RAY mezzanine interface is supported by series of off-the-shelf daughter cards such as Hybrid Memory Cube, (HMC), QSFP+, SFP+, FireFly™, QSFP28 (gearbox), and CFP4 (gearbox). HiTech Global also offers design services for any custom module requiring access to the Z-RAY interface and GTH serial transceivers of the onboard Kintex UltraScale FPGA. The small size of the platform allows creation of large computing clusters with the most optimized space in data processing centers.
Samtec: What are the most important performance specifications of the HTG-816?
Saeid: The HTG-K816 supports 8-lane of PCIe Express Gen 3 (8x8G), 16 GTH serial transceivers (16×16.3G), and 72-bit DDR4 memory.
Samtec: And I couldn’t help but notice that you incorporated the Samtec Z-Ray™ high density, low profile array into this card as the interconnect interface with the modules. Why did you choose that interconnect system?
Saeid: The Z-RAY provides the smallest area with the highest performance and best signal integrity for large number of serial transceivers running up to 28Gbps. It also provides the best mechanical solution with easy interface for different heights. We have developed a dedicated portal page for Z-Ray; our partners can point to this page when developing carrier board systems with Z-Ray.
About Z-Ray™
Z-Ray™ micro array interposers are ultra-low profile, high density, highly customizable solutions for board-to-board, IC-to-board, and cable-to-board applications.
They feature BeCu micro-formed contacts on 0.80 mm and 1.00 mm pitches, are available in a variety of standard and custom configurations, and in dual compression and single compression/solder ball designs. The contacts are assembled into rugged low profile FR4 substrate under high pressure and temperature.
