Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ: MLNX) has announced sample availability for its LinkX brand 100Gb/s direct attach copper (DAC) and active optical cable (AOC) products for both EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand and 100 Gigabit Ethernet data center networks. Mellanox will demonstrate its 100Gb/s DAC cables of 2, 4, 6 and 8 meter lengths, and 100 and 200 meter active optical cables at this week's Supercomputing 2014 conference (SC14) in New Orleans (Nov. 16-20).
Mellanox says its 100Gb/s active optical cables take advantage of a new generation of ICs which fully integrate multiple 25Gb/s clock and data recovery functions (CDR). At the same time, these ICs dramatically reduce power consumption for the optical engine to far less than 3.5W, the requirement of the small QSFP package.
The new cables are the first 100Gb/s additions to the company's LinkX comprehensive portfolio of 10, 40, and 56 Gb/s copper and fiber cables, serving both Ethernet and InfiniBand infrastructures. The Mellanox roadmap also includes new cables and transceivers to interconnect 25G and 50G ports with 100G ports, adds the company.
“Mellanox is the first and only company to offer plug and play 100Gb/s copper, VCSEL and silicon photonics cables in the QSFP28 form factor,” asserts Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Our ability to drive 100Gb/s throughput over long distance DAC cables delivers a major cost advantage to our customers and reduces overall data center capex and opex. All our cables are designed to make 100Gb/s deployments as simple as 10Gb/s ones.”