What Makes 40G Active Optical Cable So Popular?

40G active optical cable (AOC) is a high performance, low power consumption, long reach interconnect solution supporting 40G Ethernet, fiber channel and PCIE. It is widely used in many fields as well as promoting the traditional data center to step into optical interconnection. Compared to 40G copper direct attach cables and 40GBASE QSFP+ optics, what makes 40G AOC so popular?

What Is 40G AOC?

40G AOC, is a type of active optical cable for 40GbE applications that is terminated with 40GBASE QSFP+ transceiver on one end while on the other end, it can be terminated with QSFP+ connector, SFP+ connector, or LC/SC/FC/ST connector. Active optical cable uses electrical-to-optical conversion on the cable ends to improve speed and distance performance of the cable without sacrificing compatibility with standard electrical interfaces. QSFP+ AOC integrates four data lanes in each direction with 40Gbps aggregate bandwidth. Each lane can operate at 10Gbps with lengths ranging from one to 100m. It is compliant with the QSFP MSA and IEEE P802.3ba. The following picture shows the structure of an active optical cable and three different kinds of QSFP+ AOC.

Advantages of 40G AOC

40G AOCs have great advantages over 40G copper DACs and 40GBASE QSFP+ optics. 40G AOCs cost lower than SR4 modules and do not need to use with extra fiber patch cables. In particular, 40G breakout AOCs, such as 40GBASE QSFP+ to 4xSFP+ or 40GBASE QSFP+ to 8xLC AOCs are cost-effective solutions to achieve 40G migration. Additionally, using AOCs, there are no cleanliness issues in optical connector and there is no need to do termination plug and test when troubleshooting, which can help user save more time and money. 40G AOCs achieve longer reach, have lower weight and tighter bend radius, which enables simpler cable management and the thinner cables allows better airflow for cooling. Besides, AOCs have better consistency and repeatability cabling performance. With the integration and sealed design, AOCs can avoid the influence of environment and vibration. Additionally, for troubleshooting, AOCs are more easier to manage. Because users do not need to do a seires of termination plug and test on-site as they do when using SR4 modules and patch cables.

Applications of 40G AOC

40G AOC is commonly used for short-range multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications, for it provides light weight, high performance, low power consumption, low interconnection loss, EMI immunity and flexibility. QSFP AOC supports InfiniBand QDR/DDR/SDR, Ethernet (10 and 40Gbps), Fibre Channel (8 and 10 Gbps), SAS and other protocol applications. AOCs are highly recommended to use in data center interconnection.

The market of active optical cables keeps growing and has a broad prospect. Fiberstore AOCs achieve high data rates over long reaches which provide solutions for high-performance computing and storage applications. We offer all kinds of QSFP+ cable and 40G QSFP products with high performance and quality guaranteed.