Low-skew twinax cable for 224 Gbps PAM4 applications
Samtec has expanded its Eye Speed cable family to include Eye Speed Hyper Low Skew Twinax cable, which is optimised for 224 Gbps PAM4 applications.
Currently, 32 AWG twinax cables are available for inside-the-box use, and 27 AWG is in development for longer-reach cabled backplane systems.
Skew is a significant design concern for 224 Gbps PAM4, manifesting as delay differences within a differential pair due to physical and electrical construction in the channel. The development of Eye Speed results from extensive R&D into the impact of skew.
Tightly coupled, twinax cable co-extruded with drainless shield construction, such as the Eye Speed product family, demonstrates superior skew performance, along with stable impedance and insertion loss, even under realistic bending conditions. This enables complete control over skew by the implementer, contrasting with other manufacturing techniques for twinax cables that are not co-extruded.
Eye Speed Hyper Low Skew Twinax was specifically developed to target applications where designers require optimal high-speed performance for 60+ GHz Nyquist frequencies. By maintaining a maximum intrapair skew of 1.75 ps/m and providing exceptional signal stability, the low-skew cable delivers the best digital differential pair transmission line performance in the industry.
Eye Speed cable includes four varieties:
- Twinax — with 3.5 ps/meter maximum skew in 28-36 AWG sizes;
- Thinax— offering 40% smaller diameter than Eye Speed Twinax with the same performance in 34 AWG;
- Hyper Low Skew Twinax — providing 1.75 ps/meter maximum skew in 32 AWG size with 27 AWG in development); and
- ThinSE— a thin micro-coax with a 0.024-inch outer diameter cable.
As part of the Sudden Service® initiative, Eye Speed cables adopt a mix-and-match approach with the most popular connectors from Samtec. In other words, a designer can specify which connector is included at each end of the cable assembly.
The mix-and-match strategy enables system architects to specify Samtec high-speed cable for mid-board to mid-board applications, or near-chip/on-chip to front panel, or ASIC-adjacent to the backplane.
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
