We all know AOC active optical cables, but have you heard of AEC active cables? Today, ETU-LINK will introduce to you what is AEC active cable and what are its advantages?

The AEC active cable is issued by the HiWire Alliance, and the HiWire AEC specification defines the standard for basic electrical and mechanical specifications. AEC active cable supports transmission rates of 100G, 200G, 400G, package types include QSFP56, OSFP, QSFP-DD, the longest transmission distance can reach 7 meters, it has forward error correction (FEC) function and cable retiming Function to ensure a fully balanced signal with an ultra-low bit error rate.

AEC active cable is a key enabling technology for DDC (distributed chassis) architecture, which overcomes the density, weight and performance limitations of copper DACs, as well as the cost and availability of AOC. Its advantages are low power consumption, low cost, and space saving. The power consumption is 25% lower than that of optical devices, the cost is 50% lower than that of optical components, and the volume is smaller than DAC. Compared with direct attach cable, it can save up to 70% of space. And it is more reliable than optics.

AEC active cables are mainly used for the connection of ToR and servers, distributed chassis, and up to 500 cables per rack. The above is the AEC active cable and its advantages introduced by ETU-LINK. As new high-performance software workloads enter the network, it is most important to have a reliable and low-cost 400G interconnection solution.