Month: January 2018

Two-lane 3.5 W electrical interface enables high-speed enterprise networking Transceiver form factor doubles bandwidth and supports fast line rates Backwards compatibility with existing SFP interfaces and new SFP-DD styles Chicago, IL – January 26, 2018 – The Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (SFP-DD) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) Group is pleased to announce the release of an updated specification for the SFP-DD pluggable interface. Dedicated to fostering the development of next-generation SFP form factors used in DAC and AOC cabling, and optical transceivers, the MSA consortium released the initial SFP-DD specification (version 1.0) in September 2017. The updated specification (version 1.1) reflects enhancements to the mechanicals and drawings of the high-speed, high-density SFP-DD electrical interface comprising a module and cage/connector system targeting support up to 3.5 W optical modules in an enterprise environment. The SFP-DD form factor addresses the technical challenges of achieving a double-density interface and ensuring mechanical interoperability for module components produced by different manufacturers. The innovative electrical interface is designed to support two lanes that operate up to 25 Gbps NRZ or 56 Gbps PAM4 per lane modulation—providing aggregate bandwidth of 50 Gbps NRZ or 112 Gbps PAM4 with excellent signal integrity. In combination, an SFP-DD server port and QSFP-DD switch ports can effectively double port density in network applications. The SFP-DD interface helps meet increased demand for port density and scalability in next-generation servers. Extending speed and density, the SFP-DD electrical interface expands on the existing SFP pluggable form factor, a widely adopted interface used in data centers and other networking platforms. A key guiding principle of the MSA 1.1 specification is backward compatibility. The SFP-DD port is backwards compatible with legacy SFP and SFP+ style cables, modules and AOCs, and all new SFP-DD electrical interfaces. SFP-DD MSA founding members include Alibaba, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell EMC,