The QSFP-DD Multi Source Agreement (MSA) plans to develop a new specification extending the bandwidth of the form factor to 1.6 Tbps. The new specification will leverage 200 Gbps serial PAM4 SerDes technology currently under development.
The new specification will maintain the form factor’s eight lanes to provide an aggregate bandwidth capacity of 1.6 Tbps. The 1.6 Tbps module port will maintain backward compatibility with the entire family of QSFP and QSFP-DD modules and cables. This will provide the high degree of flexibility that end users and system designers have come to expect from QSFP and QSFP-DD, easing end user’s migration to the industry’s speed transitions. The new specification will also maintain the QSFP-DD’s riding heatsink feature that enables system designers the ability to efficiently cool higher power modules that may be required in next generation equipment.
The new QSFP-DD1600 specification will target the current port density enjoyed by systems utilizing QSFP-DD today and meet the faceplate bandwidth that is expected from next generation ASICs in the future.
“QSFP-DD’s backwards compatibility has been critical to our operational approach to upgrading the network,” says Jamie Gaudette, Partner Network Engineering Manager, from Microsoft, “We encourage the MSA’s work on QSFP-DD1600.”
“The system design flexibility that QSFP-DD enables greatly reduces the challenges in building systems with high-power modules,” says Mark Nowell, MSA co-chair, “the riding heatsink, besides enabling backwards compatibility, is an asset to system designers.”
