Molex Unveils 224 Gbps PAM4 Chip-to-Chip Connectors

[AleksandarK]

Molex, a company known for making various electronics and connectors, has today announced that the company has developed a first-of-its-kind chip-to-chip connector. Designed mainly for the data center, the Molex 224G product portfolio includes next-generation cables, backplanes, board-to-board connectors, and near-ASIC connector-to-cable solutions. Running at 224 Gbps speeds, these products use PAM4 signaling and boast with " highest levels of electrical, mechanical, physical and signal integrity." As the company states, future high-performance computing (HPC) data centers require a lot of board-to-board, chip-to-chip, and other types of communication to improve overall efficiency and remove bottlenecks in data transfer. To tackle this problem, Molex has a range of products, including Mirror Mezz Enhanced, Inception, and CX2 Dual Speed products.

Future generative AI, 1.6T (1.6 Tb/s) Ethernet, and other data center challenges need a dedicated communication standard, which Molex is aiming to provide. Working with various data center and enterprise customers, the company claims to have set the pace for products based on this 224G PAM4 chip-to-chip technology. We suspect that Open Compute Project (OCP) will be first in the line of adoption, ad Molex has historically worked with them as they adopted Mirror Mezz and Mirror Mezz Pro board-to-board connectors. The new products can be seen below, and we expect to hear more announcements from Molex's partners. Solutions like OSFP 1600, QSFP 800, and QSFP-DD 1600 already use 224G products.



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[natr0n]

Molex famous for their 4 pin connector/plug.

 

[Wye]

This sounds like a press release but it is not marked as such.

 

[Dragokar]

This sounds like a press release but it is not marked as such.

It is below in the sources

 

[bonehead123]

Molex famous for their 4 pin connector/plug.

You mean those ones that they patented way back in the 50's ?

Yea THAT era, when innovation meant creating things that actually worked like they were supposed to, WITHOUT any stupid drivers, convertors, IRQ's, bios settings etc....

Obviously, they are continuing their heritage with these new-ish connectors.... Yee haw !

fyi- the company itself has been around since the 40's

 

[Minus Infinity]

1.6Tb/s ethernet. When will my NAS and routers support such a thing, hopefully just a fw update.

 

[natr0n]

You mean those ones that they patented way back in the 50's ?

Yea THAT era, when innovation meant creating things that actually worked like they were supposed to, WITHOUT any stupid drivers, convertors, IRQ's, bios settings etc....

Obviously, they are continuing their heritage with these new-ish connectors.... Yee haw !

fyi- the company itself has been around since the 40's

I honestly didnt know they been around that long. ty for info. If I ever see one not in a pc ill be like wait a second and then remember this.

 

[The_Enigma]

This is actually very impressive to get 224 gbps over a connector cable, even one of short distance. Usually such speeds are relegated to tightly controlled signal lines on PCBs and optical connections.