PARALIGHT Active Optical Cable Assemblies

Extend your links in InfiniBand oriented applications within your Data Center

High performance computing clusters are increasingly being adopted into enterprise data centers to meet the needs of advanced applications. Financial, healthcare and other high technology organisations need the significant power of a clustered server environment, combinded with specialized interconnect solutions to process complex application data with highest speed and reliability.

InfiniBand (also known as CX4 and SFF-8470) solutions are receiving increasing interest. Its scalable, high-speed interconnect and extremely low latency was the reason that it captured significant market penetration. InfiniBand is increasingly used alongside virtualization technologies to coordinate server resources and maximize processing capability and server/storage efficiency.

Nevertheless, classical copper based InfiniBand links are limited to 10 - 15 meters, what may not be sufficient in a lot of data centers and is therefore reducing the freedom in original data center designs or during later required moves, adds and changes. Moreover, classical copper based InfiniBand cable assemblies are quite thick and unflexible and therefore an obstacle for the airflow efficiency inside racks.

Tyco Electronics PARALIGHT Active Optical Assemblies are here the innovative solution. They integrate high performance media converters which are powered via the standard InfiniBand or QSFP interface and can extend a link up to 200 meters! Moreover the small diameter and higher flexibility of the optical cable saves space and allows optimized routing in order to support best airflow efficiency.

Available are the following options:

InfiniBand (4X) to InfiniBand (4X)
InfiniBand (4X) to QSFP
QSFP to QSFP

For more detailed information, please download the PARALIGHT Data Sheet (PDF-875 kB)

InfiniBand is a trademark of the InfiniBand Trade Association