New Samtec Flyover® Cable System Extends Signal Reach At Next Gen Data Rates

The insatiable bandwidth demand for next gen data rates is driven by applications like the cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning, supercomputing, and 5G.

In this video from OFC 2023, Matt Burns walks us through a live product demonstration of a Samtec Flyover^® Cable System showing excellent performance at 112 Gbps PAM4.

The signal source is a Cadence 112 G ELR SerDes PHY, and the signal is run through a Samtec Flyover cable assembly that’s up to the task. 

The Cadence SerDes is generating 31-bit PRBS data at 112 Gbps PAM4. The signal travels to a Samtec SI Evaluation kit, to a Samtec Si-Fly™ cable connector. It then travels through 10” of 34 AWG Samtec Eye Speed^®, Ultra-Low Skew twinax, to a Samtec AcceleRate^® connector. 

The signal then travels back to the Cadence SerDes for measurement.

The results are excellent. The bit error ratio (BER) of the entire channel is 5e-13, and you can see from the open eyes that we have a very clean channel for signal integrity purposes.

Si-Fly is a low-profile Samtec Flyover cable system with a profile of only 3.8 mm. This low profile allows Si-Fly to sit next to an ASIC in any type of switching application, allowing heat sinks and other types of thermal mitigation platforms to be attached to the top of the chip and Si-Fly.

This obviously allows for the operation of up to 112 Gbps PAM4 in a system.

AcceleRate is a high-density, slim-body cable assembly with direct attach contacts. Direct attach eliminates the variability of a transition card, improving the signal integrity of the system.

Eye Speed is a proprietary, co-extruded twinax cable design that optimizes signal integrity, bandwidth, and reach.

In addition to this 112 Gbps demonstration, a PCIe 6.0 system is achieving equally impressive results. This will be reviewed in an upcoming blog.

For more information about technologies that can extend the signal reach at next gen data rates, please email our technical experts at SIG@Samtec.com. 

Here’s a link to live demonstrations of other 112 Gbps PAM4 Samtec connector systems.