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Active Optical Cables (AOC)

Molex Active Optical Cables (AOCs) achieve high data rates over long reaches, using a fraction of the power of other brands while providing streamlined installation for high-performance computing and storage applications.

Product Highlights


 Link Distance:  Data Integrity: Power Consumption:
4km distances1E-18 BER<1W per cable end

iPass+ HD-to-iPass+ HD AOC Assemblies

Features and Benefits


QSFP+ AOC cables use silicon photonics optical engines:
Longest distance (4KM), highest data integrity (1E-18 BER), and highest reliability (FIT<1) of all AOC’s on the market

QSFP+ to MPO pigtail cables available with loss budgets of 2 and 4dB, enabling links up to 4.0km:
Supports use in structured cabling systems

Low-loss singlemode pigtail versions available:
• Ensures network is capable of handling future bandwidth increases
• Minimizes future high-cost cable upgrades as bandwidth requirements increase

Firmware is field flashable via an I2C bus:
Ensures cables can be re-flashed while in the host system

Four bi-directional optical data links per end, operating at data rates from 1.0 to 14.0 (aggregated 56.0) Gbps:
Compatible with multiple protocols including InfiniBand Fourteen Data Rate (FDR), 10 Gbps Ethernet, Fibre Channel (8 and 10 Gbps), SAS 2.0 and 3.0 (6 and 12 Gbps) and other protocol applications

QSFP+ AOC cables available in standard lengths up to 300.0m and custom lengths up to 4.0km:
Longer reach than copper and multi-mode fiber solutions (100.0m typically), enabling deployment in data center and campus environments

Lower cost option versus standard transceivers and cable assemblies:
Allows for significantly more structured, economical cable links

Low Bit Error Rate (BER) of 1E-18:
Provides increased data reliability and robustness of link versus standard transceivers with 1E-12 errors per link

Low power consumption -
0.8W QDR & 40GbE (4 x 10Gbps)
1W FDR (4 x 14Gbps)
1W SAS 3.0 (4 x 12 Gbps):

•  Improves overall data-center power consumption and thermal efficiency
•  Enables deployment of additional ports for increased number of AOCs per system, resulting in more connectivity options and total system cost savings

AOCs are permanently attached to the fiber, with no air gaps:
Interface provides protection from environmental contaminants and other user disturbances during installation

Overview


Molex’s Active Optical Cables (AOC) offer significant cost advantages over traditional optical modules. Additionally, AOCs can easily be substituted by interfacing to systems via a broad range of standard MSA connectors including QSFP+, iPass+ HD and CXP. The cables are electrically compliant with InfiniBand FDR / QDR / DDR, Ethernet (10, 40 and 56 Gbps), Fibre Channel (8 and 10 Gbps), SAS 3.0 and 2.1 (12 and 6 Gbps) and other protocol applications.

Applications by Industry


Routers and switches
Storage area networks (SAN)

Hos bus adapters (HBAs)
Network interface cards
Routers and switches

This is not a definitive list of applications for this product. It represents some of the more common uses.

Resources