Artificial intelligence has become the primary driver of advanced high-speed copper and optical technology and products. The 2026 edition of the Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition filled both the south and west exhibition halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, with some presentations spilling out to nearby hotel venues. Attendance continues to grow withRead More

DesignCon 2026 opened the 26th edition of this premier technical conference reflecting the incredible advances in technology and products being driven by artificial intelligence. 2025 was an outstanding year for revenue growth in nearly every segment of the computing equipment and component market including electronic connectors which grew 14.7%, according to Bishop & Associates. ExpectationsRead More

The PCIe 7.0 specification was released in 2025, with speeds of 128 Gigatransfers per second, doubling the maximum rate of PCIe 6.0. PCI-SIG promises to double bandwidth every three years, and last month’s preliminary 8.0 draft release shows that progress is accelerating to meet the high-speed needs of the AI era. In June 2025, PCI-SIG released theRead More

Meet the Connector: CopprLink Cables CopprLink is a PCIe cable specification introduced in 2024 by PCI-SIG to standardize high-speed cabled interconnects for modern computing architectures. It defines both internal and external copper cable assemblies for PCIe systems, covering signaling rates from 2.5 GT/s through 64.0 GT/s (PCIe 5.0 and 6.0), with development underway for PCIeRead More

Data center growth is reshaping how infrastructure is designed and scaled, placing new demands on the connectors that underpin power and data transmission. By Greg MacDonald, global business development manager – Amphenol CS Products, PEI Genesis Data centers are foundational to the global digital economy, supporting everything from cloud services and financial systems to AI, healthcare,Read More

Meet the Connector: IEEE 1394 Connectors IEEE 1394 is a high-speed serial bus that supports both asynchronous and isochronous communication between a computer and a peripheral. It is also known as FireWire, a now-retired Apple interface. It has largely been replaced by USB connectors but is still used with older equipment. This low-cost connector isRead More

Advanced signal conditioning and error correction have contributed to achieving channel bandwidth far beyond what was expected just a few years ago. Moving to a higher order modulation provides a pathway to achieving next generation speeds. Constantly increasing data transmission speed over a communication link has been a key enabler of achieving higher computing performanceRead More

Meet the Connector: Hard Metric Connectors Hard metric connectors are a highly standardized, high-density solution for high-speed data and power transmission. The term “hard metric” refers to the exclusive use of standard metric measurements, as opposed to “soft metric” components that use metric dimensions converted from inch measurements. The highly standardized hard metric connectors areRead More

As the first SerDes standard to enter mass production with a global OEM, MIPI A-PHY is securing its standing as the leading standardized SerDes technology for high-speed connectivity. MIPI A-PHY became the first SerDes (serializer-deserializer) standard in mass production with a global OEM. The high-speed automotive SerDes chipset from Velinktech, a MIPI Contributor member company,Read More

Linear optical transceivers and co-packaged optics are evolving interconnect technologies that target the spiraling increase of power consumption. Strategies like these will be key to enabling future generations of high-performance computing systems. A common mantra in the computer design community today is the urgent quest to slow the growth of power consumption. Industry pundits debateRead More

The PCI standard continues to evolve to meet the challenges of PCB design and offers the flexibility to play a role in future high-speed applications. By Florian Guglhör and Martin Adamczyk, ept connectors GmbH The PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) standard originated in the early 1990s as a bus protocol for chip-to-chip communication and the connectionRead More

Meet the Connector: Server Racks Server racks are framework structures that house and organize IT hardware components, including servers and interconnects. They are an essential element of data center design; beyond merely containing the equipment, their form and design can contribute to system cooling and performance. Server racks may take the form of cabinets or shelvesRead More