NVIDIA Mellanox LinkX Cable Accessories

Explore cable adapters and Fiber Splitters for your data center.

NVIDIA Mellanox LinkX Cable Accessories

Explore cable adapters and Fiber Splitters for your data center.

NVIDIA® LinkX® Optics QSA® is a quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP)-to-small form-factor pluggable (SFP) port adapter that enables a single-channel SFP device to be inserted into a larger four- or eight-channel QSFP/QSFP double-density (QFSP-DD) port and pass through only the single-channel data. Amazingly, the QSA can link a slower one-channel, 1GbEBase-T transceiver to a high-speed eight-channel, 400GbE QSFP-DD port.

Passive optical fiber splitter cables are available for splitting four-channel, 100G or 200G SR4 multi-mode transceivers into individual channels. Splitters have an MPO-12 on one end and four duplex LC optical connectors on the other end.

Device-Wide Support

Available in 1G/10G, 25G non-return-to-zero (NRZ), and 50G-4-level pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM4) versions, NVIDIA QSA Ethernet adapters support a wide array of devices, from 0.5m direct-attach copper cables (DACs) and active optical cables (AOCs) to 10km SFP56 long-range (LR) transceivers, including 1GBase-T converters. They’re not available for InfiniBand.

QSAs can be used in all NVIDIA Mellanox Spectrum® Ethernet switches, NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX® network adapter cards, and data processing units (DPUs). Each version is backwards compatible, and the 50G-PAM4 version also supports 1G/10G/25GNRZ signaling.

The QSA is a life saver when linking legacy equipment to new high-speed 200G/400G systems.

NVIDIA Mellanox Optical Transceivers

High-Speed Interconnects

The latest rapid growth in data center traffic and cloud computing has resulted in tremendous increases in machine-to-machine traffic due to rapid adoption of server virtualization, software-defined networks (SDNs), and in-cloud computing. Now add the massive bandwidth requirements for networking terabytes of data for training Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML) GPU-based systems.

This is driving massive demands for high-bandwidth and low-latency networks. High-speed DAC and AOC cables and optical transceiver interconnects are playing a critical role in these modern data center technologies. Learn more with this 38-page e-book packed with details on Ethernet DACs, AOCs, and optical transceivers.

Key Features

  • Mechanical adapter with erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) ID tells the host the pass-through configuration
  • Supports SFP+, SFP28, SFP56 DAC, AOCs, transceivers, and BASE-T
  • No additional power required (passive, except for EPROM ID)
  • Extended temperature ranges of -10C up to 85C for hot server applications
  • Open-loop tab enables maximum air flow
  • Supports any SFP-based DAC, AOCs, multi-mode or single-mode transceiver

Benefits

  • Enables linking slower legacy equipment to new high-speed switches and network adapters
  • Near-zero latency, power consumption, and insertion loss
  • Simple plug-and-play functionality
  • QSA can be used in QSFP+, QSFP28, QSFP56, and QSFP-DD ports
  • Designed and patented by NVIDIA
  • Fiber splitter cable enables creating SR4/MPO-12 transceiver breakouts to four individual one-channel SFP/LC transceivers

Adapter Configurations

  Form Factor Connectors Part Number Lengths (Meters)
Port/fiber adapters Passive fiber splitter cables MPO-12 to 8x LC MC6709309 5, 10, 20, 30, 50
50Gb/s QSFP56 SFP56 MAM1Q00A-QSA56 N/A
25Gb/s QSFP28 SFP28 MAM1Q00A-QSA28 N/A
10Gb/s QSFP+ SFP+ MAM1Q00A-QSA N/A
MPO-to-8x LC splitter fiber cable* Passive fiber splitter cable MPO-12/flat polish-to-8x LC optical connectors MC6709309 5, 10, 20, 30, 50
* MPO is a multi-mode fiber splitter for use with 40G/100G and 200G SR4 transceivers and will not work with single mode 100G/200G/400G PSM4, DR4, FR4 transceivers and InfiniBand NDR transceivers. Fiber cable supports 1G-NRZ through-50G-PAM4.

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