At the Supercomputing Conference (SC14) in New Orleans (Nov. 17-20), Samtec is demonstrating its remote PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 3 switching over fiber technology. The company says system demonstrated achieves x8 PCIe Gen 3 data rates (8 GT/s, 64 Gb/s aggregate) to transmit 4K UHD video 100 meters upstream from a PCIeSSD to a server and back downstream to a GPU linked to a 4k display.

The demonstration uses Samtec’s PCIEO Series active optical cable (AOC) assembly, which is based on low-cost VCSEL technology. A miniature optical transceiver is located inside the plug at either end and performs the electrical-to-optical signal conversion over the thin optical fiber.

Notably, the PCIEO Series is mating compatible with the iPass copper high speed port form-factor, allowing standard compliant support for clocking, sideband signaling and idle states. Samtec notes that the AOCs are also a direct replacement for passive copper cables used for current PCIe expansion and extension systems, enabling simple upgrades for existing systems, while enabling users to choose the I/O solution that fits their I/O application requirements.

Samtec adds that its PCIEO Gen 3 cabling extends its current PCIEO Gen 2 cabling line and is beyond a demonstration-level product. The product is available to ship now. Common PCIe Gen 3 applications include remote I/O, GPGPU computing, and disaggregated computing architectures, to name a few. Samtec is exhibiting at the show's booth #956; for more information about SC14, go to http://sc14.supercomputing.org/.