The Top 10 Industry Trends 

Top 10 Trends: #8 Speed and Power

The quest to develop machines capable of performing complex tasks in less time goes back to the very first electronic computers that calculated the trajectory of artillery shells. Since those early days, advances in semiconductor technology have enabled the hand-held devices of today to have more computing power than mainframe computers from the 1960s.

Our world communicates by voice, data, and video information via networks that switch thousands of messages per second to global destinations.

Computers that not so long ago paced in milliseconds now operate in picoseconds.

Even familiar consumer devices that have relied on mechanical components since their inception have become highly sophisticated pieces of electronic equipment.

The digital revolution quickly made phonograph records obsolete in favor of CDs and the iPod. Digital photography has all but replaced negative film and wet-processed prints. Digital television is poised to become the U.S. standard in less than a year.

Dramatic advances in microprocessor speed, and the subsequent reduction in cost per function, has enabled the development of a host of new products that simply could not have existed 10 years ago.

All of this new capability has come at a price. With many more clock cycles per second, the consumption of power has also increased. This was not a particularly difficult problem as long as cooling air, propelled by an increasing array of fans, could circulate around hot components. Unfortunately, as desktop-sized machines were reduced to server blades and hand-held PDAs, packaging issues have severely impacted the ability to ensure that semiconductor junction temperatures do not exceed limits which could result in component failure.

System designers today must carefully balance speed, power, and packaging density to achieve performance and reliability goals. Emerging Internet applications, such as HDTV-on-demand, will drive equipment manufacturers to accelerate the throughput of their products. Networking standards, such as 10 Gb Ethernet, will continue to evolve into 40 and eventually 100 Gb iterations, requiring an upgrade of the entire infrastructure. The challenge will be in finding ways to efficiently distribute higher speed signals with little distortion, and power with minimal loss.

Impact on the Connector Industry
High-speed signal and power connectors have experienced an exceptional transformation over the past 10 years. Industry standard 2mm hard metric open pin field backplane connectors were primarily designed to perform at one Gb/s and less. Higher speeds, with acceptable crosstalk, could be achieved by dedicating more ground pins, but as the signal-to-ground ratio increased, the cost per mated signal line became excessive, and signal density became unacceptable. The rapid adoption of differential signaling stimulated a new generation of high-speed connectors that feature ground planes integrated within the connector, providing improved noise isolation and signal density.

 

Connector families, such as the Amphenol TCS VHDM HSD and Tyco Electronics Z-Pack HM-Zd, pushed the bandwidth envelope to more than 3.125 Gb/s.

 

 

 

 

FCI electronics changed the paradigm with the introduction of the AirMax VS connector, which introduced the concept of using air dielectric and offset contact columns to provide high-speed differential performance without the cost and weight of internal shields. A lively debate between shielded and shieldless connectors continues today, as several of the key suppliers to this market now offer both alternatives.

 As users demanded higher speeds, connector suppliers responded by fine tuning their products with smaller diameter plated through-compliant pin holes, custom plastic materials to compensate for skew, and recommendations for counterboring the plated through-hole. Advances in chip technology, providing pre-emphasis and equalization, allowed connector manufacturers to demonstrate 30-inch channels operating at more than 10 Gb/s.

The backplane connector market is currently experiencing an explosion of new interfaces that are competing for next-generation applications. Four major manufacturers—Amphenol TCS, FCI Electronics, Molex, and Tyco Electronics—have introduced new connector families that offer bandwidth up to 20 Gb/s.  

 There are few, if any, production applications that require bandwidth to these limits today, but the ability to offer a connector family with headroom sufficient to allow years of system upgrades is highly attractive to system designers.

High-speed backplane connectors have become a critical element in the architecture of new systems, and once designed in, will likely remain the interconnect of choice for the life of the product. In return for such a long commitment, equipment manufacturers have achieved agreement for true second sources among all of the major competing interfaces. Connectors that operate at more than 10 Gb/s will perform differently if internal structures are not identical. Connector manufacturers are now sharing design and manufacturing intellectual property at a sufficient level to allow dual sourcing of connectors that are mechanically and electrically identical at a rated speed. This is a major departure from the past, and likely represents a trend for the industry in the future.

Advances in both materials and construction are extending the bandwidth and reach of high-speed cable assemblies. Assemblies, using passive and active signal conditioning techniques, allow copper cables to provide cost-effective performances at more than 10 Gb/s and distances up to 24 meters.

Fiber optic connectors, with their nearly infinite bandwidth, were predicted to step in as copper interconnections began to hit their intrinsic limits. This scenario has repeatedly disappointed fiber optic component suppliers as the anticipated boundaries of copper continue to be extended. As the price for electro-optic conversion devices continues to decline and bandwidth demands increase, fiber optic connectors, at both I/O and even backplane levels, will become a practical alternative, but few engineers are willing to estimate when that may be. In the short term, the size and weight advantages of fiber optic cables are becoming considerations in cable-intensive data center and server farm applications.

All of this expanded bandwidth results in greater power consumption. A single processor can consume more than 100 watts, and the trend for higher power consumption has been on the rise since 1995. Recognition of the problem has slowed the rate of increase, but at the system level, power consumption continues to rise.

For years, the power connector segment existed as a relatively small niche. Most of the major connector suppliers offered their line of standard solutions, with several smaller suppliers focusing specifically on this market. Many of these power connectors tended to be large, inflexible, difficult to quantify, and costly. System designers chose single-sourced connectors that were often overrated for the application. This situation has changed dramatically over the past few years.

The Server System Infrastructure (SSI) was an industry standard that attempted to establish the architecture of generic servers. This specification defined the entire mechanical structure, including power connectors. Several connector companies developed compatible power connectors that are modular, low-profile, efficient, and relatively low-cost. The specification itself was not widely adopted within the server industry, but the connectors are being designed into applications in every equipment market segment.

Market demand for power connectors that feature higher conductivity, flexible modular design that allows nearly custom connectors without costly tooling charges, hybrid configurations that include combinations of both power and signal contacts, and low profile housings that consume less space and facilitate cooling airflow, are taking off. Major connector manufacturers have aggressively expanded their power connector offerings. Traditional power connector suppliers are introducing more user-friendly and flexible power connectors. Several connector housings have been designed to allow air to circulate freely around the power contacts, resulting in higher current ratings.



Commercial connectors are now available that range from a few amps up to 150 amps per contact.

 

 

 

 

 

The Future
The race to higher system performance is not likely to end anytime soon. Moore’s Law is becoming more difficult to achieve, but advances in chip technology are expected to result in smaller geometries and faster clock rates. High-speed backplane and I/O connector suppliers are busy developing next-generation products that will support more than 20 Gb/s channels. Advances in signal conditioning technology ensure that these electrical interfaces will not become bandwidth bottlenecks in the race to ever-higher speeds.

System power consumption begins at the chip level, and manufacturers are focusing on minimizing the power consumed per processing cycle. The power connector industry has been revitalized in recent years, and new interfaces that offer greater performance are entering the market. Next-generation power connectors will be introduced that offer improved:

  • Efficiency through advances in both contact design and materials 

  • Power density, putting more efficient contacts on smaller centerlines 

  • Thermal characteristics with lower profile housings and air passages in the connector body 

  • Design flexibility offering the ability to provide custom configurations at low or no cost 

  • Performance metrics that more accurately and thoroughly characterize the capability of the interface in real-world applications 

  • Standardization by formal, industry consortium or defacto specifications 

  • Lower applied cost with increasing likelihood of multiple-sourced vendors

 
 
 

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