Chip to chip at the speed of light

As data centres and data farms continue to expand and grow, the physical limits imposed by copper PCB traces are being reached – communication over copper is limited to around 10GBps, and at high speeds losses limit the distances to a few inches. Since modern data centres require the fastest possible communication, copper effectively limits system architectures by requiring that processors be placed directly next to memory chips.

One solution that’s becoming popular in data centres is moving high-speed signals from the electrical domain to the optical domain in order to take advantage of the properties of fibre optic technology. In the latest Engineers' Insight, Marco Enge explores fibre optic links and some of the cable assembly solutions making them possible in data centre applications.