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Product category: PCB Connectors
News Release from: 3M Electronics and Interconnect Solutions | Subject: HSHM series
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 10 September 2002

Orthogonal arrangement boosts backplane
speed

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Apart from being the highest-density backplane connectors on the market, the HSHM series also has dramatic implications for the speed and density of interconnect that is possible.

Apart from being the highest-density backplane connectors on the market today, the new HSHM series from 3M also includes an innovative feature that has dramatic implications for the speed and density of interconnect that is possible Thanks to flexible shielding arrangements within the connector, it is possible to position these connectors on either side of a mid-plane at right angles to each other maintaining isolation between differential pairs

This in turn allows the connectors on opposite sides to be arranged in row and column formation respectively.

In a typical telecomms application this means that switching and line cards can therefore be fitted to each side of the card in such a way that each switching card can interface directly with every line card.

Compared with a typical point-to-point scheme, where switching and line cards are connected to the same side of a backplane, virtually all trace routing can be eliminated.

Switching and line cards are positioned in close proximity, back-to-back through the mid-plane, greatly optimising the speed of communication.

The point-to-point connection is achieved at 2mm spacing thus significant space saving is achieved and traces used in conventional orthogonal arrangements eliminated.

In the mother/daughter card interface, skew and signal integrity issues become particularly critical as transmission speeds increase to multi-gigabit levels, as developers of systems to support Gigabit Ethernet will be well aware.

By positioning differential pairs in rows instead of columns the signal skew that normally arises from backplane interconnects can be effectively eliminated with the HSHM series.

In addition, with more space available to perform trace routing, developers can position traces in parallel to reduce crosstalk.

The HSHM series backplane connectors are now available from 3M.

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