19 August 2003 Böblingen, Germany, Lightwave Europe -- Ten major communications component suppliers have announced an IBPAK Multi-Source Agreement for hot-swap-capable transceivers supporting the InfiniBand specification.
The 10 are Agilent, Infineon, InfiniCon Systems, Mindspeed, Molex, Optical Communication Products, Picolight, Sun Microsystems, Tyco Electronics, and W. L. Gore & Associates. The MSA is intended to create common specifications for hot-pluggable 4X copper cable transceivers and 4X/12X fiber optic transceivers that support InfiniBand-defined ports.
IBPAK intends to enable multiple compatible sources of front-panel, hot-swap capable, 10-Gbit/s (4 lane) and 30-Gbit/s (12 lane) transceivers, including the electrical connector and guide rail. The specification incorporates the fibre attachment, the high-speed electrical, and copper cable requirements defined in InfiniBand Architecture Specification Vol. 2, 1.1.
Transceivers based on the MSA are expected to function as transparent, re-timing repeaters, providing robust board-to-board and inter-chassis interconnections enabling fabric linking equipment within data centres among InfiniBand servers or between servers and storage equipment.
The IBPAK specification also identifies common product specifications for the host PCB layout, front panel requirements, EMI seal, electrical and management interfaces, and thermal, EMI and ESD requirements. IBPAK transceivers are expected to provide signal conditioning, vendor and product information, status reports and control via a serial interface.
The IBPAK MSA group plans to make the details of the specification available to the industry so that other transceiver and component manufacturers can produce compatible products. The IBPAK final specification is expected in the Q3 2003, and IBPAK optical module member companies expect to begin shipping these new transceivers by the end of 2003.
More information on the MSA and status and availability of the specification is available on the IBPAK website.