10Gbit system for space-constrained I/O

Molex has released an XPAK form factor solution for 10 Gigabit I/O applications.

Molex has released an XPAK form factor solution for 10 Gigabit I/O applications.

The XPAK system consists of an XLink 10 Gigabit optical transponder, guide system, and 70-pin XAUI host connector.

This new solution is ideally suited to applications where board space and size is critical.

The new devices have been specifically designed to the XPAK multisource agreement (MSA) and the first products have been developed for applications where low profile is a key specification requirement.

All the modules have a maximum profile of 9.8mm and are PCI compliant.

Typical applications include network interface cards, host bus adapters, target channel adapters and dense packed storage area network and enterprise switches.

This next generation form factor is approximately one-half the size of the current generation XENPAK 10 Gigabit MSA form factor.

The XLink is an optical transponder designed to the IEEE802.3ae 10GBase-LR PMD standard.

There are four lanes of XAUI data input at 3.125Gbit/s (for Ethernet) or 3.1875Gbit/s (for Fibre Channel) per lane.

The lanes are electrically multiplexed to a single channel that modulates an uncooled DFB laser at 10.3 or 10.5Gbit/s.

The 8B/10B data stream is re-encoded to 64B/66B and can be transmitted up to 10km over standard single-mode fibre.

Molex's proprietary optical packaging design ensures efficient optical coupling, high reliability, and low cost.

Molex's 10-GBase-LR modules are available in two versions for use in either 10Gbit Ethernet or 10Gbit Fibre Channel protocol applications.

The modules are hot pluggable, operate from a 3.3 and 1.8V power supply and use a SC duplex optical interface.

They cover approximately 36 x 69mm of board space.

Molex's guide system allows for above board z-axis pluggability.

The low-profile guide system is PCI compliant.

To ensure low electromagnetic interference, the guide system shields the host connector which includes a ground tab across the front of the connector.

An optional EMI gasket can be used to ground the guide system to the faceplate.

Two additional mounting placements are available to seal either the front or back of the bezel.

For applications where the faceplate is painted the back sealing can be used.

For plated faceplates the front sealing is optional.

Both solder mount and press fit guide system prototypes are available.

The mounting pins have been arranged to allow for "belly-to-belly" mounting requirements.

The 70-position host connector features SMT leads in an edge-card configuration and is part of the z-axis pluggable family of Molex products.

The connector provides a compact, high bandwidth connection to support the XAUI (10Gbit attachment unit interface) electrical interface.

The XAUI interface defines four parallel lanes of differential data, each operating at 3.125Gbit/s for 10Gbit Ethernet protocol or at 3.1875Gbit/s for 10Gbit Fibre Channel protocol.

The connector also supports the emerging SFI4 phase 2 interface for Sonet OC-192 applications.

SFI4 phase 2 defines four parallel lanes of differential data at 2.488Gbit/s per channel.

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