A3CUBE Partners with FCI to Provide Superior Commercial Solution for PCIe Over Standard Optical Cable

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- A3CUBE Inc., a developer of advanced architectures for exascale high-performance systems, today announced a partnership with FCI, a leading supplier of connectors and interconnect systems, to introduce a major improvement in standard PCIe-based communication to add superior scalability in performance and number of nodes permitted by the technology.

Next-generation core optical networks require scalable capacities due to increasing demand for high bandwidth and on-demand applications. A3CUBE's RONNIEE 2S is a PCIe Network Interface Card with 80 Gb/s of aggregated bandwidth and four external Mini-SAS HD ports capable of running four PCIe x4 Gen 2 links (4 links x 20 Gb/s) over Mini-SAS HD cables.

With FCI as an implementation partner, A3CUBE enables the development of new and more powerful applications with the use of active optical cables in a board typically equipped with passive copper cables.

"Cable reach limitations and cable management are often overlooked challenges in networking applications said Mike Davis, Product Marketing Manager of FCI.  "The RONNIE 2S helps solve these challenges by supporting optical interconnects like FCI's Mini-SAS HD Active Optical Cable.   FCI's Mini-SAS HD AOC support reaches up to 100m has a bend radius of only 45mm, and the cable is only 3mm wide.  The RONNIE 2S and FCI's Mini-SAS HD AOC are a great pair for building PCIe Fabrics."

Connectivity options for the RONNIEE 2S include both copper and optical versions of the Mini-SAS HD cable. Connections up to 9m can be established over a standard AWG24  Mini-SAS HD copper cable. For longer lengths or for easier cable management, the RONNIEE 2S supports Mini-SAS HD Active Optical Cables.  With the support of FCI, A3CUBE procured state of the art optical cables of varying lengths necessary for successful field tests.

"Historically, high-speed data transfer over cable had too many physical limitations," said Emilio Billi, CTO of A3CUBE. "RONNIEE 2S can extend the real-time connectivity between computation and I/O using only native PCIe protocol over standard optical cables."

A3CUBE's innovative RONNIEE 2S card successfully overcomes all the current constraints that affect the development of working solutions for optics including, but not limited to, connector related constraints, PCIe-related constraints and the communication constraints that are related to traditional optical receivers.

A3 CUBE's RONNIEE Express is an innovative solution in this regard, due to the unsurpassed scalability in performance and number of nodes permitted by the technology.

RONNIEE 2S
RONNIEE 2S is a compact PCIe-based intelligent NIC designed to maximize application performance using a unique combination of hardware and software. RONNIEE 2S eliminates conventional communications bottlenecks and provides multiple channels with <1μ and fast direct remote I/O connections with nanoseconds level latency.

About A3CUBE
A3CUBE Inc. was founded in 2012 as a result of more than five years of advanced research and development. The company has assembled an elite team of highly skilled and experienced engineers in hardware, firmware, software and system design engineering and management with proven track records of success in supercomputing and HPC environments. Every member of the A3CUBE team has deep-domain expertise in complex hardware-firmware product development, testing and commercialization. All A3CUBE design and development activities are internal to the company in order to maintain complete control of all aspects of the company's products.

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Mini-SAS HD
FCI's Mini-SAS HD product portfolio features an extensive range of optical cables, copper cables, board connectors and cages for internal and external connections.  All of FCI's Mini-SAS HD products are engineered for SAS applications up to 12 Gb/s and create the most comprehensive SAS connectivity offering in the market.

About FCI
FCI Electronics is an international connector and cable assembly solutions manufacturer of Backplane Connectors, Power Solutions, Board/Wire to Board Connectors, Input/Output Connectors, Optical Interconnect, Cable Assemblies, Terminal Blocks and Flex Connectors. Our interconnect solutions are designed and manufactured for various market applications such as automotive motorized vehicles, telecommunications, data storage, consumer electronics, medical, industrial & instrumentation as well as renewable energy.

FCI Electronics employs 6,948 employees worldwide in 2013. With a global footprint comprising of the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, we are well renowned and respected for our technological leadership, as well as innovative connector and cable assembly solutions. For more information, visit www.fci.com.

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SOURCE A3CUBE