Active Electrical Cable Technology for Keysight 400GE to 4x100GE with PAM4-to-NRZ Conversion
Application Notes
Today’s data center operators have deployed mature 100GE NRZ-based technologies. Yet, the move to higher speeds such as 400GE creates a mixed speed signaling, mixed FEC, and multirate environment in data centers. This creates challenges when integrating new PAM-4-based 400GE-capable 200GE, 100GE, and 50GE switch ports with existing NRZ signaling-based technology.
To solve this challenge, Keysight now offers its 400GE test systems with first-to-market support for AEC technology for the quad small form-factor pluggable double density (QSFP-DD) form factor. Supported on all Keysight 400GE products, the AEC technology converts a PAM4- encoded port to interoperate with an NRZ-encoded port.