SXD-FIREWORKS

Most computer systems are based on the PCI Express® standard as a high speed backbone for interconnection of peripheral components with a target CPU. However, sometimes not all PCI Express® based devices are located closely in a common enclosure, and therefore need external cabling for merging distributed subsystems virtually into a single PCI Express® based computer assembly.
The SXD-FIREWORKS is a target system adapter card for PCIe® x8 external optical cabling, equipped with an MPO/MTP front panel housing, for attachment of a 24- or 12-fiber optical patch cable as connection to a suitable target system. The SXD-FIREWORKS fits into the system slot of a CompactPCI® Serial backplane, as replacement for a CPU card in the target system. With its on-board PCIe® packet switch the SXD-FIREWORKS replicates two PCI Express® Gen3 x8 links across a 3-slot CompactPCI® Serial backplane. Thus, two CompactPCI® Serial fat pipe slot cards in the target system can be natively controlled by the remote target system CPU, with a transfer rate of up to 64Gbps.
The SXD-FIREWORKS target adapter for CompactPCI®Serial systems enables a Gen3 PCIe® optical cable link up to 100m. Samtec FireFly™ PCIe®-over-fiber transceivers provide high performance signal quality with BER better than 1E-12.

Compared to other cabling solutions e.g. 40Gbps Ethernet, a PCI Express® Gen3 x8 link offers higher data transfer rates at lower latency.