The HiWire Consortium standardization efforts will be absorbed into a new Interconnects Sub-Project inside the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP). All the Active Electrical Cable Specs were contributed to OCP and can be found on the OCP Contribution Database and the associated products are on display on the OCP Marketplace.
The new Interconnects Sub-Project is led by Don Barnetson, Vice President for AEC Products at Credo.
As a result of this announcement, OCP will have oversight for the ratified HiWire Specification v1.0, which was originally announced in 2020. The new AEC Project inside OCP will build on this specification by adding additional speeds, capabilities and test specifications as driven by OCP membership.
“The HiWire Consortium leads the inaugural effort to bring standardization to a new category of connectivity products – Active Electrical Cables (AECs),” said Sheng Huang, President of the HiWire Consortium. “As AECs move into the mainstream, we feel the broader umbrella of OCP will continue to accelerate standardization efforts and increase industry adoption.”
“Within the next five years, the 650 Group predicts AECs will take over 75% of server connections and displace chassis in hyperscaler data centers,” said Don Barnetson, Vice President for AEC Products at Credo and the OCP AEC project lead. “Standardization within OCP will further accelerate adoption among the hyperscalers and telecom service provider space.”
“OCP’s members see AECs as a critical technology for their customers which include the world’s largest hyperscalers,” said Steve Helvie, Vice President of Channel Development for OCP. “The Community is excited to continue this standardization work and thanks to the HiWire Consortium for its pioneering effort to bring this revolutionary product to market with such broad industry acceptance. We’re also very fortunate to have Credo as a certified OCP Solution Provider showcasing AECs on our OCP Marketplace, providing the Community a more comprehensive set of OCP solutions.
“Active Electrical Cables are key to enabling cloud infrastructure interconnect at the density, scale and ultra-low power required to meet our demands for the coming years,” said Gerald Degrace, Senior Director of Next Gen Technology, Microsoft. “As an active member of both the HiWire Consortium and OCP we’re excited by the synergies of standardizing AECs inside OCP’s broad industry scope.”
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A new HiWire Consortium has been established to pursue the standardization and certification of a new category of Active Electrical Cables (AEC). The group is dedicated to the establishment and ongoing development of an AEC standard that defines a specific implementation of the many industry MSAs and a formal certification process. This will enable an ecosystem of trusted Plug and Play AECs, available from multiple sources, for the hyperscale data…
