24 March 2015

Mellanox announces commercial deployments of LinkX 100Gb/s cables

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd, a supplier of end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions and services for data-center servers and storage systems, has announced commercial deployments of its new 100Gb/s LinkX active optical cables (AOCs) and direct attach copper cables (DACs) for data-center and high-performance computing applications. The new LinkX cables use the high-density, low-power, low-cost QSFP28 form factor, enabling 36 ports in a 1U switch, making 100Gb/s deployments as easy as 10Gb/s.

"With the high performance and the amazing 10-15 BER [bit error rate] of LinkX DACs and AOCs, we are achieving 100Gb/s full wire speed," comments Jorge Vinals, director at Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota. "Our EDR InfiniBand cluster is the first of its kind in the US and, with 100Gb/s capabilities, the EDR InfiniBand large-scale cluster will help us perform critical research at the University of Minnesota," he adds.

"Mellanox is the first and only company to offer plug & play 100Gb/s copper, VCSEL and silicon photonics cables in the QSFP28 form factor," claims Mellanox's VP of marketing Gilad Shainer. "Our ability to drive 100Gb/s throughput over long-distance DAC cables delivers a major cost advantage to our customers and reduces overall data-center CapEx and OpEx," he adds. "All our cables are designed to make 100Gb/s deployments as simple as 10Gb/s ones."

Mellanox says that its 100Gb/s active optical cables take advantage of a new generation of ICs that fully integrate multiple 25Gb/s clock & data recovery functions (CDR). These ICs also dramatically reduce power consumption for the optical engine to far less than 3.5W, the requirement of the small QSFP package.

Mellanox adds that, to ensure that all LinkX cables and transceivers work the first time and every time, it subjects its products to a full system test in a stressed environment. Network engineers do not have to waste time debugging a new installation with untested products. With LinkX products, installation experts can bring up new clusters fast, with fewer interconnect problems and higher quality and signal integrity.

All commercial versions of LinkX interconnect products endure full system testing to 10-15 BER in order to maximize overall data-center performance. A BER of 10-15 provides 1000x fewer transmission errors than many competing products, it is claimed. Fewer transmission errors translate to fewer re-tries, higher system performance, and more revenue-generating traffic, the firm adds.

Tags: Mellanox AOC QSFP

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