FPGA Supporting 25Gb per 5-Meter Copper Cable, Virtex UltraScale Devices

Xilinx has announced the introduction of pioneering transceiver technology that enhances cost efficiency in data center interconnects.

Xilinx's Virtex UltraScale™ devices comply with 25GE, 50GE, and 100GE copper cable and backplane IEEE standards in data centers. Additionally, they meet related specifications that support up to 5 meters of copper cable in data centers and up to 1 meter in backplane interconnects.

These specifications include IEEE 802.3bj 100GBASE-CR4/KR4, IEEE 802.3by 25GBASE-CR/CR-S/KR/KR-S, and 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium 50GBASE-CR2/KR2. This enables data center customers to use nx25G copper cables instead of optical cables to connect servers to top-of-rack (ToR) switches with cost and power optimized solutions that comply with any specification or vendor standards.

Xilinx's transceiver technology delivers superior signal quality and automatic adaptive equalization, achieving the highest signal integrity and the fastest serial link implementation. Virtex UltraScale FPGA provides a high-performance, low-latency Ethernet solution perfectly suited for data center workload acceleration through integrated 100G Ethernet MAC IP, soft error correction (RS-FEC) IP, and ASIC-class logic fabric.

Kirk Saban, Senior Director of Product Management and Marketing for Xilinx FPGA and SoC, stated: "With mass production of Virtex UltraScale FPGA, Xilinx is the only company in the industry guaranteeing 25Gb on copper cable and backplane specifications. Xilinx is committed to enabling customers to leverage the lowest-risk and most cost-efficient solutions for their data center deployments."