100Gb技术基础

The industry appears to be transitioning from 10x10G to a more efficient 4X25G. The first standard for 25Gb/s signaling was the OIF-CEI with VSR, SR and LR standards. What I have been looking at recently are the Ethernet 802.3bm 100GBASE-KR4 backplane standard and the Ethernet interconnect standard 802.3bj.

To achieve 100G there is CAUI10, which is 10 lanes of 10G = 100G, while CAUI4 is 4 lanes of 25G = 100G.

100GBASE-CR4 is 4 lanes of 25G using CAUI4 = 100G throughput.

All three standards below (from 100 Gb/s Backplane and Copper Cable Task Force) are intended to allow designers to drive 100G of data over either backplanes or passive copper cable DAC (Direct Attach Copper).

 

100GBASE-CR4: 100 Gb/s transmission using 100GBASE-R encoding and Clause 91 RS-FEC over four lanes of shielded balanced copper cabling, with reach up to at least 5 m

100GBASE-KP4: 100 Gb/s transmission using 100GBASE-R encoding, Clause 91 RS-FEC, and 4-level pulse amplitude modulation over four lanes of an electrical back-plane, with a total insertion loss of up to 33 dB at 7 GHz

100GBASE-KR4: 100 Gb/s transmission using 100GBASE-R encoding, Clause 91 RS-FEC, and 2-level pulse amplitude modulation over four lanes of an electrical back-plane, with a total insertion loss of up to 35 dB at 12.9 GHz

 

100GBASE-CR4 is 4 lanes of 25G using DAC cable up to 5 Meters (target 16.5dB). After playing for years in the high speed backplane designs, this new standard has been my focus recently.  5 Meters of DAC is a relatively decent distance if you need to connect switches in a stack or even between stacks to adjacent rows of switches.

100GBASE-KP4 is 4 lanes of 25G using PAM4 modulation, which allows a designer to drive backplane signals with a 33dB at 7GHZ. This standard effectivly uses 14G signalling using multilevel modulation over long backplanes (including vias, connectors, and PCB etch).

100GBASE-KR4 is 4 lanes of 25G using PAM2 modulation to drive backplane signals with up to an insertion loss of 35dB at 12.9Ghz. This is effectivley driving 4 lanes of 25G signalling on relatively long backlane traces that include connectors, vias and PCB etch.