Mezzanine card extends the reach of copper cables

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 16, 2006

Fulcrum Microsystems has announced the industry's first extended reach CX4 mezzanine card.

Fulcrum Microsystems has announced the industry's first extended reach CX4 mezzanine card.

The card is for use with the Fulcrum FocalPoint switch reference design, which will allow OEMs to attain up to 40m of reach on up to 24 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet seamlessly.

"Increasing the reach of 10G Ethernet at an attractive price point will help accelerate its adoption in the data centre", said Harry Quackenboss, Chairman and CEO of Woven Systems.

"Quellan's Lane Manager devices drive copper cable distances substantially farther than the standards specify, minimising the need for expensive fibre optic interconnects".

The mezzanine cards are populated with Quellan's QLx4300 Lane Manager chips that actively remove impairments and compensate for channel loss, allowing data centre managers to use ultrathin 30 gauge CX4 cabling for increased airflow, density and manageability or extend the reach of traditional 24 gauge cable to up to 40m.

"Signal integrity and low latency are critical parameters for next generation data centres", said Joel Goergen, Chief Scientist at Force10 Networks.

"Quellan's products address both these issues in a very low power consumption device".

The FocalPoint FM2224 is a breakthrough 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch chip with 200ns of total latency, making Ethernet the new cost-effective and high-performance choice for storage, computing and networking backplane and interconnect applications.

The FM2224 features 24 integrated 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, each of which can be configured to operate in 10Gbit/s, 2.5Gbit/s and 10/100/1000 modes.

"Our customers are eager to reduce weight and improve density in their data centre interconnects", said Bob Nunn CEO of Fulcrum.

"Our collaboration with Quellan has yielded a ready-to-go solution to address these issues".

"Clearly, next generation data centre interconnects are challenged by reach, weight and density issues - and the only way to achieve this is with low power, smart silicon at each end", said Tony Stelliga, Chairman and CEO of Quellan.

"Next generation high density switches can now run up to four times farther on cabling that is just one third the size and weight of existing copper interconnects".