Sunday, October 23, 2022

Market drivers for Active Electrical Cables

Marvell has confirmed that  that leading cable manufacturers, including Amphenol, Molex, and TE Connectivity, are sampling to cloud data center operators their 100G/lane active electrical cables (AECs) powered by Marvell Alaska A PAM4 DSPs.

 At these speeds, the physical reach achievable with passive direct attach cables (DACs) falls short of the distance requirements for server-to-ToR (top of rack) and switch-to-switch interconnects. For cloud operators to continue their routine data center bandwidth doubling, most of these interconnects must transition from DAC to AEC. 

Marvell says the new AECs enable next-generation 400G, 800G and 1.6T server-to-switch and switch-to-switch interconnects that require 100G serial I/Os.

Marvell’s Alaska A family further applies advanced DSP equalization techniques and flexible firmware-based implementation to optimally compensate for the impairments introduced by the cable on the high-speed 100G PAM4 signal. This provides the ability to deploy thin cables that address the reach and flexibility needs of next-generation data center architectures.

Here is a over of the market from Venu Balasubramonian,  VP of product marketing, High Speed Connectivity and PHY Business Unit, Marvell.



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