4 April 2011

TE launches 2nd-gen 10G QSFP+ active optical cable assemblies

TE Connectivity (TE) of Harrisburg, PA, USA has launched its second generation of PARALIGHT QSFP+ active optical cable (AOC) assemblies, offering power and cost savings through fully integrated optical engines that use less power, are lower in cost, offer higher performance, and are more competitively priced compared to the prior generation.

Designed with internally terminated optics, the new product line eliminates the need to clean an optical connector. The cables’ passively cooled, environmentally friendly design offers a low thermal resistance path from the chip to the connector shell for additional operational savings. An added benefit is improved cable management though the cables’ lightweight design, small diameter of 3.0mm, and tight bend radius.

This second generation of cables includes four transmit and four receive channels at 10Gbps per channel for InfiniBand standard SDR, DDR and QDR applications. With 850nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) technology, the cable assemblies operate over a data rate of 2.5–10Gbps per lane with an aggregate data rate of 40Gbps. The cables incorporate electrical–optical and optical–electrical conversion that is built into the connector shell to yield a dramatic improvement in PCB real-estate utilization.

The AOC assemblies are available in lengths up to 100m using 50 micron fiber (and longer lengths are available upon request). The EOE circuitry is designed for use with 8B/10B encoded data streams such as InfiniBand, Fiber Channel and XAUI. The QSFP connector style supports connections for an I2C-serial interface, which can be used to identify the product and performance capabilities.

Product applications include high-speed interconnects within and between switches and transport equipment, server–server clusters, supercomputing interconnections, and rack-to-rack, shelf-to-shelf, board-to-board and board-to-optical backplane interconnections. The active optical cables meet the differential I/O per InifiniBand version 1.2.1 specification.

Tags: QSFP+ AOC VCSELs

Visit: www.te.com

Join Semiconductor Today's LinkedIn networking and discussion group