Gore Introduces Low-Profile Copper Cable for QSFP Assemblies

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Gore announced today the general availability of a few low profile QSFP direct attach copper cable assembly.  The new cable design is marketed toward QDR Infiniband and 40GbE aggegratation customers that have heartache surrounding the traditionally plump copper.  Gore provided samples of the new cables to major switch vendors for testing over the last 6-8  months.

Chris Ericksen, Application Engineer at Gore, adds, “Gore continues to add value through innovation. We see the consistency and extremely low dielectric loss-tangent (0.0004) of ePTFE having a more pronounced impact, when compared to conductor loss, as data rates increase and support frequencies move further into the microwave range. Gore’s history of “Best-in Class” microwave cables is very evident and measurable in the high speed digital world.”

The new cables have a diameter of 0.170″ for a 4X channel, 8-pair cable.  One would save 37% in the overall cross-section as opposed to traditional 4X cables from Gore and 58% compared to other traditional 4X cables.  This is huge.  Those of you not familiar with large Infiniband installations [especially those with a true fat-tree topology] know that the cable density can get really nasty.  Weight and airflow become serious issues when one has several hundred cables aggregated into a single cabinet.  For more info, read the full Gore release here.