
Molex teams for 112G data centre active cable designs
Molex has launched a line of 112G Active Electrical Cables (AEC) for data centres with reference designs from Celestica and Innovium.
AEC increases reach up to five meters without requiring optical cables while also supporting smaller conductors for improved cable management. AEC can also support gearbox capabilities as well as smart cable functionality for adding an extra measure of system-level redundancy.
The 112G AEC copper interconnect family joins Active Copper Cable (ACC), which works like passive cable to extend the reach of external cabling and supports low-power linear amplifier-based semiconductors for improved power management and thermal needs.
The active cable system is used with the Molex BiPass signal integrity technology that works with the TGA and the NearStack family of connectors. The vertical BiPass implementation provides higher thermal performance and low-power requirements, which lets datacenters reduce their carbon footprints. BiPass also provides low latency for end-to-end channel performance while lowering costs by reducing printed circuit board (PCB) complexity.
“There is no such thing as ‘one size fits all’ interconnect technologies to support different applications across today’s enterprise and hyperscale data centres,” said Aldo Lopez, president, Datacom Solutions, Molex. “We offer our customers and ecosystem partners the broadest portfolio of future-proof interconnect solutions, which ease transitions to new architectures and simplify engineering development while reducing costs and time to market.”
“Collaborating with Molex on next-generation interconnect innovations and reference designs enables us to meet evolving customer needs. Innovium’s highly power efficient 32-port 800G TERALYNX 8 switch leverages Molex’s pluggable QSFP-DD800 modules and BiPass I/O technology to drive better performance and operational efficiencies while benefiting customers with the delivery of pre-tested and pre-validated reference designs,” said Amit Sanyal, VP of Marketing at Innovium
“Celestica has developed a wide range of end-to-end infrastructure systems that support powerful datacenter solutions. In collaborating with Molex, we are propelling the industry forward with our development of the first reference switches to use Molex’s vertical BiPass implementation, delivering the thermal and signal-integrity performance needed for 112G systems,” said Randy Clark, Sr. Director, Product Solutions at Celestic
Market researcher Gartner expects end-user spending on global data centre infrastructure to reach $200 billion this year, as large enterprise facilities resume expansion while hyperscalers continue to expand globally. Additionally, skyrocketing demand for bandwidth-intensive, data-driven services, which accelerated during COVID-19, is fueling a rise in compute, data storage and networking capabilities. To keep pace, companies are moving from monolithic data centre designs to distributed and disaggregated architectures, which creates significant connectivity challenges.
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