Mr. Raouf Halim reports

SPECTRA7 AND VOLEX ANNOUNCE SUCCESSFUL DEMONSTRATION OF INDUSTRY LEADING PERFORMANCE FOR 800G ACTIVE COPPER INTERCONNECTS

Spectra7 Microsystems Inc. and Volex PLC, a global leader in high-speed data centre interconnect products, have successfully demonstrated industry-leading performance of 800-gigabit active copper cables (ACCs) at this year's annual DesignCon conference exhibition held last week in Santa Clara, Calif.

In the demonstration, Volex 800-gigabit-per-second QSFP-DD ACCs with Spectra7's embedded GC1122 chips successfully interoperated with test equipment from several vendors to produce very robust low pre-FEC (forward error correction) bit error rates (BERs) significantly below standard required BERs.

"New network architectures and increased server speeds are causing the market for connectivity inside the data centre to embrace active solutions," said Alan Weckel, founder and technology analyst with 650 Group. "By 2026, we expect over 70 per cent of the cloud server market to be active copper. We expect the market to quickly exceed $1-billion (U.S.) and can exceed $3-billion (U.S.) by 2026, which is far higher than the DAC [direct attach cable] market it will replace. Active copper cables also help support the $22-billion (U.S.) and growing Ethernet market in the data centre, which is critical for the future growth of cloud and AI/ML [artificial intelligence/machine learning] applications."

"We are proud to have Volex as a partner for 800G interconnects using our GaugeChanger integrated chips," said Spectra7 chief executive officer Raouf Halim. "We see strong demand from customers for the low-power, low-latency and cost-effective 800G cables that we are jointly bringing to the hyperscale data centre market."

Spectra7's analog-based GaugeChanger GC1122 chips are used in ACCs and offer significant cost, size and energy consumption value versus competing active electrical cables (AECs) and active optical cables (AOCs) that use digital signal processing (DSP) technologies.

About Spectra7 Microsystems Inc.

Spectra7 Microsystems is a high performance analog semiconductor company delivering unprecedented bandwidth, speed and resolution to enable disruptive industrial design for leading electronics manufacturers in virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, data centres and other connectivity markets. Spectra7 is based in San Jose, Calif., with a design center in Cork, Ireland, and a technical support location in Dongguan, China.

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