Ralph Page, Systems Architect at Samtec, walks us through a live product demonstration of a Samtec high-speed connector running at 56 Gbps PAM4, with incredible performance. It can also be run up to 28 Gbps NRZ.
This active product demonstration uses a Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+ 56 Gbps PAM4 VCU 129 FPGA Evaluation Kit. The connector we’re evaluating is a Samtec HSEC8-DP. It’s a micro-pitch, high-speed edge card connector, for differential pair configurations. Check-out HSEC8-DV for the standard configuration.
Signal Path
The Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGA generates two bi-directional channels of QPRBS-31 signal data. These differential signals pass through the PCB to a Samtec Bulls Eye® High-Performance Test cable system on the VCU-129 board. Today we’re using a Samtec Bulls Eye BE40A, which is rated at 50GHz.
The signals travel from the Bulls Eye connector through 30” of coaxial cable, to two adjacent pairs on a Samtec HSEC8-DP SI Evaluation board. This shows a real-life design environment, including crosstalk. The coax cables terminate to 2.40 mm compression precision RF connectors on the HSEC8 board.
The signals then travel to the HSEC8 connector, which mates to the card edge pads on the second SI evaluation board.
The differential signals exit that board through 2.40 mm precision RF connectors, through coax cable, and back to the Bulls Eye BE40A test cable system on the VCU-129 board. The data routes back to and is recovered at the Virtex UltraScale+ device.
Results
Ralph reviews the highlights of the electrical performance of this demo. He notes wide margins on the slicer eye and histogram; they show “very clean signals.” What’s more impressive is the errors, or specifically, the lack thereof.
At the time we shot this video, the system had been running for about two hours and was showing zero bit errors. And this is all Pre-FEC bit errors. Ralph notes that an estimated Pre-FEC bit error ratio is 6e-15, which will continue to go down as the system continues to run.
Samtec SI Evaluation Kits
This demo incorporates an HSEC8-DP SI Evaluation Kit. Samtec has a variety of Board-to-Board SI Evaluation Kits. These provide system designers and SI engineers easy-to-use platforms for testing many of Samtec’s popular board-to-board connector products.
Each kit includes the evaluation platform, calibration board(s), technical documentation, and test reports. Also, each kit is tested and verified by Samtec’s signal integrity experts before customer delivery.
HSEC8 Connector
Samtec’s HSEC8 is a high-speed, rugged, edge card connector system on .8 mm pitch. HSEC8 is our most popular edge card connector, and it incorporates the Edge Rate® contact system.
HSEC8 is used in a variety of industries and applications, including servers, storage, networking, test and measurement, and wired and wireless communication, to name a few.
Bulls Eye Test Cable Systems
Bulls Eye test systems are rated at 20, 50, and 70 GHz. Samtec Bulls Eye test point systems are ideal for high performance test applications because of their compression interfaces, small footprint, and high cycle count capabilities.
If you have questions about this demonstration, please contact us at SIG@samtec.com.
You may also want to check out the 56 G Product Demonstrator.
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