Samtec’s FireFly™ Micro Flyover System is an inside-the-box interconnect system that gives designers the option to future-proof their systems.
This future proofing allows an easy upgrade from copper to optical with the same connector and footprint. With the highest 14 Gbps bandwidth density available, the FireFly™ system enables chip-to-chip, board-to-board and system-to-system connectivity at data rates up to 28Gb/s (in development).
By taking the data connections “off-board” with flyover cables, the signal integrity design is made far easier, and the electrical performance is significantly improved.
Allowing data to fly over lossy board materials and other signal degrading components negates the need for the layout complexities that are required to design for high speed signalling, eliminating the need to worry about complex board routing issues that often arise.
The two-piece board level interconnects isolate the signal and power lines and simplifying trace routing compared to array systems. The two-piece design also improves ease-of-assembly compared to compression systems utilizing mechanical screw-downs.
Unlike existing optical engine-based solutions, thermal operating conditions are acknowledged and designed for by including an integral heat sink.
The heat sink is available in several default designs to allow for air cooling or cold plate liquid cooling. In addition, the flexible design accepts customer specific heat sinks for easy integration into existing thermal solutions.
FireFly™ cable assemblies include the ECUO Series X12 with unidirectional or bidirectional optical transceivers, and the ECUE Series assembly with Samtec’s 100Ω 38AWG micro ribbon coax cable.
The rugged two-piece board level interconnect, the UEC5 Edge Card connector and UCC8 Positive Latch connector, come with standard weld tabs, locking mechanisms, and loading guides. This system provides simplified mating and unmating of the cable assembly, compared to compression systems utilizing mechanical screw downs and hardware.
To learn more about FireFly visit www.samtec.com/firefly or e-mail us at firefly@samtec.com.
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