In booth 3745 at Super Computing 2012 (SC12) in Salt Lake City (10-16 November), high-speed fiber-optic interconnect firm Molex Inc of Lisle, IL, USA has announced the availability of its QSFP+ low-power 56Gbps Fourteen Data Rate active optical cable (AOC), which delivers what is claimed to be a reliable and less costly solution for aggregated data rates up to 56Gbps over reaches up to 4km.
The QSFP+ 56Gbps AOC integrated cable requires less than 1W per cable, and provides the flexibility of traditional optical modules by interfacing to systems via a standard multiple-source agreement QSFP (quad small-form-factor pluggable) connector.
“As data centers and scalable HPC clusters become larger and more distributed, Molex’s single-mode solution provides customers with a lower-cost alternative that can interconnect at medium-range distances at a fraction of long-range optics costs,” says product manager Brent Hatfield. “This also provides customers with a clear path to speed upgrades without having to continuously upgrade their structured cabling, and the standard QSFP+ port is an economical, readily available interconnect to support those requirements,” he adds.
Featuring four bi-directional optical data links per end, each operating at data rates from 1.0 to 14.0Gbps, Molex’s Fourteen Data Rate (FDR) AOC cables are compatible with multiple protocols including InfiniBand FDR, 10Gb Ethernet, SAS 2.0 and 3.0 (6 and 12Gbps), and Fibre Channel (8 and 10Gbps). A low bit-error rate of 10e-18 errors provides increased data reliability and a robust link compared to standard transceivers with 10e-15 errors per link. The cables are also available in a low-loss pigtail version, which allows users to install the single-mode fiber separately and connect to the pigtail version to avoid constant high-cost cable upgrades as bandwidth increases.
The 56Gbps AOC cables are available in lengths up to 4km (2.49 miles) for optimal design flexibility. The single-mode fiber technology provides a longer reach than copper and multi-mode fiber solutions in data-center and campus environments. The firmware is field flashable via a I2C bus so cables can be reflashed while in the host system.
