NVIDIA LinkX Cable Accessories

Explore cable adapters and Fiber Splitters for your data center.

NVIDIA^® LinkX^® Optics QSA^® is a quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP)-to-small form-factor pluggable (SFP) port adapter that enables a single-channel SFP device to be inserted into a larger four- or eight-channel QSFP/QSFP double-density (QFSP-DD) port and pass through only the single-channel data. Amazingly, the QSA can link a slower one-channel, 1GbEBase-T transceiver to a high-speed eight-channel, 400GbE QSFP-DD port.

Passive optical fiber splitter cables are available for splitting four-channel, 100G or 200G SR4 multi-mode transceivers into individual channels. Splitters have an MPO-12 on one end and four duplex LC optical connectors on the other end.

Device-Wide Support

Available in 1G/10G, 25G non-return-to-zero (NRZ), and 50G-4-level pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM4) versions, NVIDIA QSA Ethernet adapters support a wide array of devices, from 0.5m direct-attach copper cables (DACs) and active optical cables (AOCs) to 10km SFP56 long-range (LR) transceivers, including 1GBase-T converters. They’re not available for InfiniBand.

QSAs can be used in all NVIDIA Spectrum® Ethernet switches, NVIDIA ConnectX® network adapter cards, and data processing units (DPUs). Each version is backwards compatible, and the 50G-PAM4 version also supports 1G/10G/25GNRZ signaling.

The QSA is a life saver when linking legacy equipment to new high-speed 200G/400G systems.

High-Speed Interconnects

The latest rapid growth in data center traffic and cloud computing has resulted in tremendous increases in machine-to-machine traffic due to rapid adoption of server virtualization, software-defined networks (SDNs), and in-cloud computing. Now add the massive bandwidth requirements for networking terabytes of data for training Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML) GPU-based systems.

This is driving massive demands for high-bandwidth and low-latency networks. High-speed DAC and AOC cables and optical transceiver interconnects are playing a critical role in these modern data center technologies.

Key Features

Mechanical adapter with erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) ID tells the host the pass-through configuration
Supports SFP+, SFP28, SFP56 DAC, AOCs, transceivers, and BASE-T
No additional power required (passive, except for EPROM ID)
Extended temperature ranges of -10C up to 85C for hot server applications
Open-loop tab enables maximum air flow
Supports any SFP-based DAC, AOCs, multi-mode or single-mode transceiver

Benefits

Enables linking slower legacy equipment to new high-speed switches and network adapters
Near-zero latency, power consumption, and insertion loss
Simple plug-and-play functionality
QSA can be used in QSFP+, QSFP28, QSFP56, and QSFP-DD ports
Designed and patented by NVIDIA
Fiber splitter cable enables creating SR4/MPO-12 transceiver breakouts to four individual one-channel SFP/LC transceivers

Adapter Configurations

* MPO is a multi-mode fiber splitter for use with 40G/100G and 200G SR4 transceivers and will not work with single mode 100G/200G/400G PSM4, DR4, FR4 transceivers and InfiniBand NDR transceivers. Fiber cable supports 1G-NRZ through-50G-PAM4.