FCI delivers 40 Gb/s performance with ExaMAX connector technology

The new beam-on-beam contact structure at the ExaMAX mating interface assures two reliable points of contact and minimizes the inherent electrical stub at the contact interface, eliminating unwanted insertion loss resonances. The overmolded leadframe assembly precisely locates balanced differential pairs within formed channels in a complementary ground plane, and this optimized structure prevents additional ground-mode resonances, demonstrates well-controlled impedance and zero skew, and exhibits minimal crosstalk throughout the connector.

“The challenges in designing this unique mating interface, besides eliminating the stub resonance, were to ensure two reliable points of contact with sufficient contact wipe and normal force in extreme mating conditions. Extensive signal integrity and mechanical analyses were completed to verify product performance, durability and reliability as well to confirm channel performance up to 40 Gb/s,” said Danny Morlion, CTO at FCI.

In addition to its revolutionary mating interface, ExaMAX connector technology provides a compact design similar to the AirMax connector external envelope for low cost flat rock press-block, lower PCB real estate usage and optimized cooling air-flow. An optimized PCB footprint with larger column spacing is used in the High Bandwidth version to allow for stitched ground vias that create a larger signal bandwidth and suppress footprint crosstalk between adjacent column pairs.

“A lot of energy has been put to design ExaMAX connectors with the right balance between performance, density and ease of user design while retaining the lowest possible applied costs” added MORLION.

ExaMAX technology is adaptable to a wide range of system interconnect applications and will serve as the platform for a broad spectrum of designs for backplane, midplane, mezzanine, orthogonal, coplanar and cable I/O interconnects that address future requirements for serial data rates ranging up to 40 Gb/s. ExaMAX connectors are compatible with the hard metric design practice and can easily be used alongside all AirMax High Speed Backplane Signal, Guide and Power modules, giving the system architect incredible flexibility and capability to achieve the optimal balance of cost and performance in equipment designs.

FCI will showcase the signal integrity performance of the High Density version of its ExaMAX backplane connector on January 29-30 at the DesignCon 2013 exhibition in Santa Clara, CA. Visit Booth 516 to see operating Backplane and Cable I/O demonstrations with active signal transmission at 25 Gb/s that meets all of the performance requirements of the OIF 25G-LR specification.