Mellanox Ships 100,000+ Cables for Next-Gen 100 Gb/s Networks

Today Mellanox announced that it has shipped more than 100,000 units of its Direct Attach Copper Cables (DACs) to serve the growing demand of hyperscale Web 2.0 and cloud 100Gb/s networks.

Hyperscale customers are selecting Mellanox cables due to our advanced manufacturing automation technologies which enable us to achieve higher quality, lower costs and to deliver in high volume,” said Amir Prescher, senior vice president of business development and general manager of the interconnect business at Mellanox. “Copper cables are the most cost effective way to connect new 25G and 50G servers to TOR switches as they enable the entire new generation of 100Gb/s networks.”

Mellanox offers a full line of 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100Gb/s copper cabling for server and storage interconnect. The two most popular options are splitter cables, which feature a 100Gb/s connector at one end for plugging into a switch port and either two 50Gb/s connectors or four 25Gb/s connectors at the other end for connecting to 25G or 50G servers. Widely used by hyperscale customers to connect servers to the top of the rack (TOR) switch, DACs have lower cost and zero power consumption when compared to optical cables and transceivers. The superior performance and low 1E-15 BER eliminates the need for FEC, which would add latency to the critical server-TOR link. Mellanox has ramped up into high volume production for 100Gb/s products faster than its competitors because of in-house design expertise for key interconnect components.

Mellanox designs their own copper cables, as well as the drivers, TIAs, silicon photonics chips, packaging, and modules for optical products. All qualification and testing is performed by Mellanox. Deploying advanced manufacturing automation technologies helps to achieve higher quality and lower costs. This, “end to end” control of the supply chain and manufacturing lines ensures Mellanox can scale to meet market demand.

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