With the global headquarters of Samtec in Southern Indiana, we are surrounded by people wanting to go Fast! A few weeks ago we watched horses go fast in the 148th Kentucky Derby. This past weekend we watched Indy Cars go fast during the 106th Indianapolis 500.
A driver or jocky’s decision-making and reaction time made me think of delays or latency when it comes to the interconnect market. High-speed connectors are a sweet spot for Samtec and if you are unfamiliar with some of our offerings I urge you to take a look Here.
Reaction Times
Comparing the speed of a derby horse to an Indy car is not really relevant and a jocky has exponentially more time to make a decision based on the ground covered. The speed of a horse at the Kentucky Derby is typically around 37 mph (60 km/h). An Indy car is running closer to 235 mph (378 km/h). This is probably due to the almost 700 horsepower engines used in today’s cars!
Most average humans have a reaction time of 0.5 seconds from when their brain makes a decision and when the action takes place. A racecar driver is as quick as 0.2 seconds.1 At 0.2 seconds at 235 mph this can still transverse 69 feet (21m)
If we bring this back to connectors and electronics one parallel may be latency. If you send a signal to a processor, how long does it take to get back? Did your button push on your online game results in the action fast enough to dodge the attack, or make the final blow? Did the processor make the decision fast enough or did the connection path cause delays due to losses, reflections, or insufficient bandwidth? Good latency for a gamer would be ideally around 30ms.2
Signal Integrity to Go Fast!
As I started to ask around our Signal Integrity group for the biggest issues that may cause a signal issue or delay. I soon realized there was not an easy answer. The connectors are a small but critical junction, almost like the best pit crew at the Indy 500. You can design the best path, and use the highest speed processor. If you can not make a clean transition at the connector all of your gains could quickly be lost.
Our team of system architects, technologists, and engineers work hand in hand to help you design a well-oiled and the highest performance interconnect system on the market. I have become decent at looking at Signal Integrity reports and picking frequency domain concerns. When you start looking at more than just the connector it gets a little fuzzy and the variables get massive.
If you want to see how wild and crazy it can get you need to take a look at the Channel Operating Margin (COM) presentation from our gEEk spEEk webinars. Using COM to analyze and tune your design sooner not only helps you design a fast channel, but also can help you bring the product to life with fewer iterations.
Sudden Service to Go Fast!
Samtec not only wants to be your best pit crew and help your system go fast. We also want to make sure we get you the information fast as well. Sudden Service is our foundation. If we can provide test results instantly, provide models to download, or gets samples in your hands fast you can make informed decisions sooner.
If you like to watch fast things for entertainment, play fast-paced games online, or design the fastest systems on the market Samtec is there for you. We cross multiple industries and have products around the world helping transfer signals from point A to point B faster than anyone!
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