Tackling Increasing Bandwidth Demands

How emerging technologies and evolving standards are necessitating new approaches to cabling.

TTI Inc. has submitted this post. Written by David Foresyth, Global Product Portfolio Manager, 3M Company.

While the evolution of 5G cellular, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is placing intensive bandwidth demands on connectivity and communications infrastructure, PCI Express (PCIe®) and Ethernet are two major connectivity technologies that share many challenges and solutions to handle these increasing bandwidth speeds and performance requirements.

New developments in thin, highly flexible, high-speed cabling and assembly solutions are addressing these challenges, making connectivity work for internal and external cabling requirements with smaller devices without sacrificing performance.

The Rise of Cloud Computing

The significant shift to remote work since 2020 has driven the demand for agile computing that scales up or down according to demand. Cloud hosting providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM and others have developed cloud computing infrastructure to support enterprise data centers, vendor-specific economies of scale and public, private or hybrid offerings for enterprises to offload some or all on-premises data center operations to the cloud, with capacity scaling a key added benefit over traditional on-premises data centers. Specialized providers offer security, cost savings, flexibility and scalability benefits.

As part of this trend, while the data center has evolved from on-premises to a cloud-computing structure over the past decade, data processing resources are now shifting again—this time toward edge computing, local processing or networks of IoT devices. Local devices are using a decrease in chip size and increased computing power to support more intensive computing demands. Market demands such as streaming TV and online gaming require scalable, agile computing. Companies such as 3M are innovating in the digital edge space, using 5G networks to compute and communicate faster, thus moving computing power itself to the digital edge.

The Increasing Influence of AI and ML

AI and ML are also driving increasing demand for data center resources. With today’s computing power, ML can train servers to analyze tremendous amounts of data, calculate at an accelerated rate and provide insights that would otherwise take a significant amount of time. Looking at market trends, 51 percent of enterprises have plans to implement AI, while 25 percent have already done so.

How do we make better decisions with the data we have? AI is the tool for that. If we look at the forecast for spend and business value, by 2030, 44 percent will use AI and machine learning in some capacity. That’s a significant use of this technology and tool to develop insights with a tremendous amount of data.

Devices have been developed to communicate faster as networks advance to today’s on-demand data and services to the user through a cell phone with data typically pulled from a data center to the end user device. Because of the constant drive toward smaller, faster, more powerful networks and other infrastructure, there is significant projected growth rate of service providers and industries driving data center and communications expansion and improvement.

PCIe® Standards Improve Performance Over Previous Generations

Founded in 1992, the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG®) is an association of over 800 industry companies all working toward the goal of defining a common specification for performance, or the PCI Express I/O bus specifications and related form factors.

(Source: PCI-SIG.)

(Source: PCI-SIG.)

One of the key features of PCIe® standards is that each new generation is backward-compatible with the previous generation, supporting consumer- and industrial-level device interoperability. PCI-SIG® works to double the bandwidth of interconnect technology every three years, releasing the specification for industry standards to inform hardware design processes.

From the initial standard PCIe® 1.0 in the early 2000s that operated on the 3G cellular network to the recently released PCIe 5.0® and the emerging PCIe 6.0® versions, communication and processing capabilities have evolved to leverage the capabilities of ever-improving cellular networks. Ethernet speeds have evolved from 100-gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 400 GbE being implemented today with some early adopters implementing 800 GbE.

Application Demand for Higher-Bandwidth Communication Drives High-Speed Ethernet Adoption

The IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers), founded in 1963, writes the Ethernet standard for external devices communicating from the server to the switch and the switch to the network. Similar to the PCIe® market, the majority of the Ethernet market is 100 Gbps with most 400 Gbps enterprises having opted to move from 100 Gbps directly to 400 Gbps or even 800 Gbps.

3M™ Twin Axial High Speed Cable Solutions Provide the Optimal Solution

Twin Axial Cables from 3M offer flexible and even foldable internal and external cables to support the faster speeds of emerging PCIe® and IEEE 802.3XX standards. The ability to bend these Direct Attach Copper assemblies (DACs) allows easy routing in between DIMM slots and fans, allowing manufacturers to take advantage of the minimal space in dense servers and to route parallel to the airflow to maximize cooling efficiency and retain signal integrity.

Optical has taken over in the fabric of the network but going from the neck to the top of the rack, copper is still the dominant solution. As we evolve to 800 Gbps and maybe 1.6 Tbps, even though the reach of the Direct Attach Copper cable is shortening, the cost-performance ratio is still a higher benefit over optical—so much so that some are redesigning the typical rack configuration and moving the switch where needed to maximize the performance of the deck cables. Eventually, as onboard optics becomes available, that might change, but the cost-power-thermal aspects of using copper are all still benefits that outweigh the performance and the costs of optical.

While bandwidth speed and performance demands are only going to increase in the future with advanced developments in cloud computing, AI and ML, high-speed connectivity technologies like PCIe® and Ethernet are being maximized through new cabling and assembly products that offer cost-effective, space-saving solutions with enhanced performance.

To learn more, visit 3M™ High Speed Cable Assemblies from TTI, Inc.