Samtec Introduces FireFly FMC Development Kit

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

Samtec Inc. has come out with the 14 Gbps FireFly FMC Development Kit. This solution allows for easier development and evaluation of the company’s FireFly optical engines, which do optical to electrical and electrical to optical conversions on cable lengths of up to 100 meters.

“Evaluating optical engine technology has high barriers of entry,” explained Matt Burns, Samtec product marketing manager. “Samtec’s new 14 Gbps FireFly FMC Development Kit eases FireFly evaluation and development by leveraging the FMC interface common on most industry-standard FPGA development tools.”

The kit addresses such applications as broadcast video and audio, data and telecommunications, high-performance computing, high-resolution imaging (for medical use, for example), networking switches and routers, servers, storage, and test and measurement. And it supports Aurora, Ethernet, fibre channel, FPGA-to-FPGA, and InfiniBand.

“The 14 Gbps FireFly FMC Module provides up to 140 Gbps full-duplex bandwidth over 10 channels from an FPGA to an industry-standard multi-mode fiber optic cable,” the company said.

The kit comes in a VITA 57.1 FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) form factor. It can be used for optical data communication on any FMC-enabled FPGA development board supporting high-speed multi-gigabit transceivers. It can run system data or BERT testing from a single channel to all 10 channels in parallel. And it supports up to 10 high-speed, multi-gigabit transceivers (TX and RX) operating at up to 14 Gbps per channel.

It also features two (1 TX/1 RX) FireFly two-piece SMT connector systems (UCC8/UEC5 series), optimized SI performance via Samtec Final Inch BOR PCB trace routing for FireFly and FMC connectors, and an industry-standard 24 fiber MTP/MPO connector.

Samtec was founded in 1976 and remains a privately held company. The company manufactures electronic interconnect solutions including IC-to-Board and IC Packaging, High-Speed Board-to-Board, High-Speed Cables, Mid-Board and Panel Optics, Flexible Stacking, and Micro/Rugged components and cables. And it has 33 locations in 18 countries.