What do the QSFP-DD800 MSA and VITA 57 have in common? Fair question. One focuses on defining the next-gen pluggable form factors while the other complements FPGA mezzanine applications. So what is the link? Samtec, of course! Samtec participates in many Industry Standards to develop commonality is specific applications. QSFP-DD800 and VITA 57 are but two examples. QSFP-DD800 MSA: New HW Spec QSFP28. QSFP-DD. QSFP-DD800. It seems the Multi Source Agreements (MSAs) for Quad Small … [Read more...]
VITA 57.1 FMC and VITA 57.4 FMC+ are like ‘Avengers: Endgame’ . . . Kinda
What’s that? There’s a new movie out? What’s it called? Avengers? Who are they? What do they do? I highly doubt anyone – except someone’s grandmother – has said the above. 'Avengers: Endgame' has been taking the world by storm. For superhero fanboys like yours truly, 'Avengers: Endgame' is the dream movie worth waiting for. In a similar way, the VITA 57 FMC and FMC+ specifications are the dream interface between FPGAs carrier cards and mezzanine cards. Like 'Avengers: Endgame' … [Read more...]
New Optical FMC+ Module Supports Extended Temperature Ranges
Readers of the Samtec blog are familiar with the benefits of FMC and FMC+. These popular interfaces define a compact electro-mechanical expansion interface for a daughter card to an FPGA baseboard or other device with re-configurable I/O capability. VITA 57.1 has been around for some time. It supports 10 full-duplex transceivers running at 10 Gbps. The new VITA 57.4 standard defines two new connectors. Combined, they offer 32 full-duplex transceivers running at 28 Gbps. New … [Read more...]
BBC R+D Leverages FMC for Audio Codec Replacement
Our friends at Xilinx recently blogged about how the BBC R+D department replaced a 32-year old small rack-mount audio codec with low-cost off-the-shelf solutions customized to fit the BBC's needs. According to Justin Mitchell, principal engineer at BBC R+D, this project occurred since the original audio codec could no longer be supported due to component aging and a lack of parts. The heart of the new system is the Xilinx Zynq SoC found on the low-cost ZedBoard development kit available from … [Read more...]