Enabling multi-sourced, cost-effective AECs for ToR switches
C-TubeTM is the next generation low power high performance Active Electrical Cable (AEC) that supports 400G Base-SR4 Ethernet using our CDR SoC and reference design.
Point2 Technology’s C-TubeTM (PT-QD20132) is used in the next generation low power, high-performance QSFP-DD Active Electrical Cable (AEC) modules that support 400G Base-SR4 Ethernet. It accepts eight lanes of 53.125Gbps PAM4 (26.5625 Gbaud/lane) and each lane can operate up to 7 meters while achieving good BER performance (Pre-FEC , about 1E-8) and maintaining low power dissipation.
C-TubeTM integrates high-performance CDR technology and equalization techniques to compensate for Inter-symbol Interference (ISI) effects. In addition, an onboard MCU that allows the users to access full monitoring and configuration data via the 2-wire QSFP Management Interface. Also, a customized firmware can be downloaded to C-TubeTM to satisfy any different setting for various environments.
Complete 400G AEC Reference Design
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Reference design has been used by manufacturers to accelerate development time
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Paddle card and microcontroller software available now
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Reduce development cost and qualification efforts to reduce TCO
- Host side compliant with MSA QSFP-DD specification (CMIS 5.0+)
- Cable side has 2-row top and 2-row bottom pad architecture
- Top Design: 4 Quad CDR uniformly placed
- Botton Design: DCDC and MCU
QSFP-DD Active Cable
- 400G data rate
- Single 3.3V power supply
- Low Power consumption (4.5W TYP)
- Hot pluggable
- Up to 7 meters
- RoHS compliant
- I2C management interface
- Polyvinylchloride (PVC) jacket
- Compliant with MSA QSFP-DD specifications
- All-metal housing
- Operating case temperature 0 to +70°C
