Xilinx Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs Cut System Cabling Costs By Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars

At DesignCon 2005, Xilinx Inc. today showcased the industry's first demonstration of Virtex-II Pro X RocketIO Multi-Gigabit Transceivers (MGTs) driving 10 Gbps of serial data over one meter of industry standard InfiniBand copper cable assemblies, developed by Meritec. The demonstration proves that a cost effective and reliable cabling solution at data rates up to 10 Gbps is possible with off the shelf components. As a result, designers seeking lower-cost system cabling can now save tens of thousands of dollars compared to optical based solutions. For instance, a multi-shelf system composed of two 80 gigabit Metro Aggregation Switches requires eight bidirectional 10 Gbps links. Using two Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs and a standard x12 InfiniBand cable, this solution can be provided for less than $800 while a comparable solution using the XFP or X2 optical modules would cost more than $15K.