TE News: 

SAN DIEGO – March 8, 2023 – TE Connectivity (TE), in collaboration with Intel, will demonstrate its 224 Gbps PAM4 Long Reach development efforts at OFC 2023, the leading optical networking event in North America, March 7-9 in San Diego.

As the industry works to develop high speed solutions at 224 Gbps that enable lightning speeds for networking and AI applications, Intel and TE are demonstrating that the future is here now. The demonstrations of 224 Gbps, broadly seen as the industry’s next-generation data rate, are being driven by Intel’s 224 Gbps PAM4-LR transceiver test chip, capable of achieving 2x improvement in bandwidth jitter and noise.

The first demo consists of Intel’s 224 Gbps test chip addressing TE’s over-the-board (OTB) architecture consisting of a 224 near-chip cable assembly. TE’s 224 Gbps AdrenaLINE Catapult product helps enable premium signal integrity channels for near-chip to near-chip, near-chip to cabled input/output (I/O) ports, and near-chip to cabled backplane architectures in next generation equipment. TE’s fine pitch interconnect technology combined with its cutting-edge copper cable solutions enable cable connectivity in extreme close proximity to an ASIC or FPGA at 224G speeds. This can provide notable signal integrity transition to the ASIC or FPGA as required for minimal equalization. This type of internal cable assembly can enable flexible architectures to help realize next-generation equipment such as switches, routers, and accelerator fabrics.

In the second demo, the same Intel transceiver addresses an octal small form-factor pluggable (OSFP) based channel consisting of TE’s prototype OSFP 224 Gbps connector and cage with a 1-meter OSFP passive DAC copper cable, a long reach objective set by IEEE for its 200G lane rate. Passive DAC cables are highly valued in cloud and networking architectures for their low cost, excellent sturdiness and ease of use.

“It is exciting to see the progress that Intel has made in developing 224 Gbps SerDes IP that can help enable next generation networks. Intel is leading the FPGA industry through its world’s first 224 Gbps PAM4-LR transceiver test chip which has demonstrated flexibility, scalability, and excellent power and performance for bandwidth-intensive and reach-flexible applications,” said Nathan Tracy, technologist and manager of industry standards at TE Connectivity.

“TE’s 224G development work based on Intel’s 224 Gbps PAM4-LR transceiver is showing great progress toward helping enable next generation architectures both inside equipment and in between equipment,” said Mike Peng Li, a fellow on SerDes and I/O, Intel Corporation.

The DAC demonstration can be seen at both Intel’s booth #2901 and TE’s booth #6035. The internal cable assembly demonstration “AdrenaLINE Catapult near-chip connector” can be seen at TE’s booth #6035.