Optical interconnect demos PCIe links over FPGA board

Samtec has demonstrated its FireFly micro-flyover system for the Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGA evaluation kit. In this demo, the 28G x4 FireFly optical connector system transports four 28-Gbps transceiver signals generated by an FPGA.

These four 28-Gbps signals fly over the board through an FQSFP twinax cable assembly to the port and then loop back over the same path, where they are received by the FPGA. Thus, the demo showcases the 28-Gbps performance on all four links with zero-bit errors while having traveled over the twinax cable.

The FireFly mid-board technology supports the PCIe Gen 3 interface for low-latency applications in data center environments. Samtec claims that its FireFly PCIe-over-fiber solution allows storage and the GPU to be located as far as 100 m away.

The FireFly interconnect system enables chip-to-chip, board-to-board, on-board, and system-to-system connectivity at data rates up to 28 Gbps. Moreover, its micro-footprint for optical and copper interconnects is interchangeable within the same connector system.