1. At 50Gbps/lane, passive direct-attach copper (DAC) cables barely reach 3-meters. At 100Gbps/lane, DACs may only have a 2-meter practical reach limit.
2. The switch PCB consumes too much of the channel budget, which then limits the cable reach and increases cable gauge.
3. DACs are rigid, heavy, and bulky, restricting airflow for system cooling and making rack servicing difficult.

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1. Optical modules have high power consumption. A 400G module consumes around 12W and a 800G module may consume up to 20W.
2. Optical modules require advanced low loss materials which are expensive.
3. Optical modules have a shorter lifespan and are less reliable compared to active copper cables. Data center operators need to constantly maintain and replace the failed optical modules.

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1. Active Optical Cables (AOC) can be used for rate conversion and to achieve thin wire profile. However, such optical designs incur additional costs, reliability concerns, and require more power.
2. Active Copper Cables (ACC) can be used for rate conversion, have a lower design cost when compared to AOC while also supporting even thinner gauge cabling as compared to passive DACs. General purpose ACCs are limited by their lack of diagnostics and security features.
3. Smart Electrical Cables (SEC) that utilize Taurus Smart Cable Modules have all the benefits of an ACC with the added “”smarts”” required by Cloud Service Providers.

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1. Switch-to-server: ToR Switches to Network Interface Cards (NIC) interconnects on a server.
2. Switch-to-switch: within a spine switch and spine switch to Exit Leaf interconnects.

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Taurus Smart Cable Modules can provide gearbox functionality at 200GbE from 4x50G to 8x25G.

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1. Rate mismatches between NIC and switch lead to wasted switch bandwidth.
2. Traditional DAC interconnects are too short, thick and bulky to handle high speed ethernet signals between ToR switches and multiple racks.

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Smart Electrical Cables (SEC) support longer reach and thinner cabling while adding security and diagnostic capability.

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A Taurus Smart Cable Module with gearbox capability can be used on the NIC to resolve the per-lane rate disparity and reduce the end-to-end channel loss, thereby increasing the cable reach and/or reducing cable gauge.

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In an average 3m 34 AWG copper wire, the typical channel loss is about 28dB at 12.9GHz, but might be as high as 36dB during worst cases.

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Taurus Smart Cable Modules’ advanced fleet management capabilities include Full CMIS Features, Security, and Extensive Diagnostics (Cable Degradation Monitoring, Host-Cable Security, Multiple Loopback Modes, and Pattern Generation/Checking)

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Taurus offers various firmware and setting updates to adapt to diverse system topologies, including firmware flexibility, in-field upgrade support, health monitoring and debug, and CMIS extension.

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A user can update module management functions, adaption algorithms, and full-module firmware even after the cable is deployed to the switch system.

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We offer complete CMIS Firmware update procedures in the product datasheet.

1. NRZ is a modulation technique that has two voltage levels to represent logic 0 and logic 1. PAM4 uses four voltage levels to represent four combinations of two bits logic – 11, 10, 01, and 00.
2. PAM4 has the advantages of halving the Nyquist frequency and doubling the throughput for the same Baud rate. This alleviates the need for designers to have to invent infrastructure like silicon and cables that would go up to 50GHz bandwidth.
3. The SNR loss of a PAM4 signal compared to an NRZ signal is ~9.5 dB.

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