Development kits with FireFly optical engines released

Manufacturer of a broad line of electronic interconnect solutions, Samtec, proudly announces the release of the two new FireFly FMC+ Development Kits. The first supports data rates of 25Gbps per channel while the second runs at 28Gbps per channel. These new solutions offer easy-to-use evaluation and development platforms for Samtec’s FireFly optical engines.

Samtec’s 25/28Gbps FireFly FMC+ Modules provides up to 400/448Gbps full-duplex bandwidth over up to 16 channels from an FPGA/SoC to an industry-standard multi-mode fiber optic cable. The new kits support protocols including Ethernet, InfiniBandTM, Fiber Channel and Aurora typically found in Video, Mil/Aero, Embedded Computing, Instrumentation, HPC and Date Center applications.

FireFly optical engines make the electrical to optical conversion in the transmit path and the optical to electrical conversion in the receive path. They are based on proven MultiMode optics and support cable lengths up to 100m.

As a VITA 57.4-compliant FMC+ Module, Samtec’s new solutions can be used for optical data communication on any FPGA/SoC development platform that supports the VITA 57.4 interface. Both kits can run system data or BERT testing from a single channel to all sixteen channels in parallel. Technical documentation and FPGA reference designs are available for quick start-up.

Matt Burns, Product Marketing Manager at Samtec, stated:“Evaluating 100 Gbps/112 Gbps optical engine technology has high barriers of entry. Samtec’s new FireFly FMC+ Development Kits simplify the evaluation and development of FireFly technology by using the emerging FMC+ interface typical of high-performance FPGA/SoC development tools.”