Vitesse and Molex demo green 14 G technology for data center connectivity

OFC/NFOEC 2012, LOS ANGELES, USA: Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. and Molex Inc. have announced a technology demonstration of energy efficient 14 G connectivity for cost-sensitive, high density data center applications.

Featuring Vitesse’s new VSC7224 quad adaptive channel extender and Molex’s Fourteen Data Rate (FDR) Quad Small Form Factor (QSFP+) Active Optical Cables (AOC), this joint solution is ideal for a multiple of markets and applications including switches, routers, Host Bus Adapters, Enterprise data centers, high-performance computing and storage.

Improving power consumption and thermal efficiency, link robustness and aggregate bandwidth connectivity are critical challenges for data centers. The combined Molex-Vitesse connectivity solution solves these data center issues at 20 percent lower power than competitive solutions. Capable of exceeding 14 G over extended reaches up to 4 km, the devices are also electrically compliant with multiple protocols including: InfiniBand (SDR, DDR, QDR and FDR), Ethernet (10G and 40G), Fibre Channel (8GFC, 10GFC and 16GFC), and SAS (6G and 12G).

“We are excited to participate in this interoperability testing with Vitesse signal integrity ICs and our AOCs running FDR data rates on QSFP+ interfaces. The form factors and Molex’s Silicon Photonics technology provides customers the promised roadmap to speed, density and reliability,” stated Adit Narasimha, manager of new product development for fiber optic products at Molex. “FDR AOC solutions reduce overall data center power consumption, improve thermal efficiency and enable deployment of additional ports per system.”

“This solution provides a QSFP+ footprint for our customers to leverage a field-proven design and improve time to market,” said Kinana Hussain, product marketing manager for Vitesse. “The power savings delivered by our VSC7224 and the Molex AOC cables represent a winning formula for cost-sensitive data center applications. Such connectivity solutions are pivotal to Vitesse’s goal of achieving robust signal integrity performance as Carrier, Enterprise and data center networks migrate to higher data rates and port densities.”