Three Things to Know about Astera Labs’ Taurus Ethernet Smart Cable Module Diagnostic Capabilities
Today’s data centers are under pressure to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for data processing, transfer, and storage. This is especially true with the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the continued investments by more than 97% of organizations in big data and AI initiatives[1].
To keep this data moving and easily accessible, Astera Labs’ Taurus Ethernet Smart Cable Modules™ remove performance bottlenecks in data center switch-to-switch and switch-to-server interconnects by overcoming reach, signal integrity and bandwidth utilization issues for 100G/Lane Ethernet connectivity. Active Electrical Cables built with Taurus optimize routing and serviceability by enabling half the bend radius compared to passive cables, while also reducing total cost of ownership with 2x thinner cables, improved air flow, and supply chain flexibility.
To enable Hyperscalers, Cloud Service Providers, and Enterprise data center end-users to optimize performance, high reliability, and uptime, Taurus provides advanced fleet management and deep diagnostics capabilities. These fleet management capabilities are critical as the scale of operations in today’s data centers are massive and complex. Each data center can have hundreds of thousands of high-speed connections between servers, switches, routers, storage systems and more – and they all need to be monitored and managed to minimize downtime.
Any connectivity issue that goes undetected can negatively impact uptime, network performance, resource allocation, security, and issue resolution. Taurus’ fleet management and diagnostics capabilities pinpoint these issues so they can be fixed in a timely manner by exposing underlying telemetry, enabling proactive monitoring, and accelerating bring-up and management of entire data center fleets.
Here are three key things to know about Taurus’ diagnostic capabilities.
- Taurus’ diagnostics expose telemetry to monitor overall system health.
- To monitor module health, Taurus tracks temperature, voltage, current, etc.
- To monitor link health, Taurus tracks SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), eye metrics, adaptation parameters, and more.
- To monitor overall signal integrity performance, Taurus supports multiple loopback modes including shallow and deep loopback, and it supports module self-testing.
- Taurus’ Software Development Kit (SDK) enables sophisticated cloud-scale fleet management.
- Taurus supports spot checks on protocol, electrical and environmental health.
- Taurus supports threshold checks so the system can take action to cool down/shut down if the temperature exceeds a set limit.
- Taurus supports intelligent analytics with algorithms and artificial intelligence to predict failures before they happen.
- Taurus’ diagnostic capabilities decrease total cost of ownership.
- In the qualification phase, Taurus can accelerate triage and debug cycles, and reduce overall bring up time.
- In the manufacturing phase, Taurus can detect issues earlier and enable the deployment of purpose-built manufacturing test tools that help reduce the quality testing time from minutes to seconds. This reduces bring-up costs and increases manufacturing capacity.
- In the production phase, Taurus can monitor system health at fleet-scale. It can detect degrading cables and cables that are not fully connected, thereby increasing uptime and operating expenses.
Without access to these diagnostics capabilities, data center operators could suffer substantial consequences including massive downtime resulting in lost revenue. In fact, according to research by the Ponemon Institute, each minute of downtime can cost an average of $9,000, bringing the cost of downtime per hour to over $500,000![2] By implementing effective fleet management and diagnostics capabilities, data center operators can minimize downtime and implement proactive measures to address potential performance bottlenecks or failures. Visit Taurus Ethernet Smart Cable Modules or contact us to learn more about Taurus’ support for fleet management.
[1] Data and AI Leadership Executive Survey 2022, NewVantage Partners, 2022, https://c6abb8db-514c-4f5b-b5a1-fc710f1e464e.filesusr.com/ugd/e5361a_2f859f3457f24cff9b2f8a2bf54f82b7.pdf
[2] Trilio: The True Cost of Downtime: 21 Stats You Need to Know. August 11, 2022. https://trilio.io/cost-of-downtime/#:~:text=More%20recent%20research%20from%20Uptime,increase%20from%2011%25%20in%202019.