The maximum insertion loss for CABLExpress's Skinny-Trunk fiber-optic cable assemblies is now 0.25 dB per mated pair. The company says the assemblies, which are fitted with MTP connectors, will keep network within loss budgets when running 10-, 40- and even 100-Gbit/sec Ethernet.
Last year CABLExpress lowered the insertion loss value of its Skinny-Trunk assemblies to 0.35 dB. The company says that "improvements to the cable manufacturing process and extensive production testing" enabled this further-improvement of loss performance.
According to Mark Fabbi, vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner, the timing for the introduction of such a low-loss assembly is good. "2012 will be the year where 10G attached servers become the norm, which in turn will drive demand for 40G and eventually 100G within the enterprise data center," he noted. "Enterprises are encouraged to rethink their physical data center architecture and prepare for increased fiber deployment to support 40/100G backbone requirements."
CABLExpress's president Peter E. Belyea added, "As data rates increase and loss budgets decrease, increasing performance is critical. Our product development team continues to focus on improving existing dB loss rates in an effort to provide customers with the best data center cabling solution on the market."