Next generation super computers, quantum computing, AI engines, and high-performance emulation systems are all evaluating the benefits of liquid cooling. Liquid cooling removes the heat more efficiently than airflow, eliminates the noisy, power-hungry fans used in traditional air-cooled systems and enables denser, more-efficient processing boards and systems.
One technology holding back the adoption of liquid cooling has been the lack of optical transceivers which perform reliability while submersed. A new submersible optical transceiver option with Samtec FireFly™ now solves this problem.
In this demonstration at SC18 (Super Computing), Arlon Martin of the Samtec Optical Group walks us through a live demonstration of an immersion cooling system with a submersible optical Samtec FireFly transceiver running at 112 Gpbs (x4-28 Gbps/lane).
The demo highlights the error-free operation possible with new FireFly optical transceivers when fully submersed in 3M™ Fluorinert™ Electronic Liquid FC-43.
Liquid cooling is extremely important for next generation super computers because about 40% of the energy of a typical super computer is used for cooling. Liquid cooling reduces energy usage, and it allows designers to make denser, more compact, and higher performing computer systems.
The FireFly transceiver is a mid-board optical module which is less than 25% of the size of a QSFP module, and uses less than 50% of the power of a normal transceiver. This allows for very dense, high performance computing applications.
The live demo features a fully submersed Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ VCU118 Evaluation Kit with a new optical FireFly transceiver which supports links up to 100m at lane speeds of 28 Gbps per channel.
The optical FireFly™ System features the industry’s leading miniature footprint. This allows for higher density and closer proximity to the IC. The results are a simplified board layout, enhanced signal integrity from IC to faceplate and reduced power dissipation.
FireFly micro cable assembly systems are available in both optical and copper designs. Both systems use the same two-piece, low insertion force connector system with surface mount tails to eliminate through-holes in the board. Click here to watch a video about FireFly.
Customer samples of the submersible FireFly optical modules are available now and full production is planned for later in 2019.
