Product Highlights > TwinAx High Speed Cable Solutions

3M™ TwinAx High Speed Cable Solutions: Thin, low profile cable with extremely tight bend radii

Designed for scalability and tight bends without compromising signal integrity performance.

Evolving technology and the growth of the digital economy requires infrastructure and interconnection to stay ahead of increasing demands. From the emergence of 5G cellular, cloud, edge and fog computing, to artificial and machine learning, I/O bandwidth demands are doubling every 3 years.¹

A portfolio of both internal I/O and Direct Attach Copper (DAC) solutions, 3M™ TwinAx High Speed Cable Solutions help your servers, switches, storage and other high-speed equipment to achieve performance at the levels your customer’s demand. Their thin, low-profile designs allow for more routing options within an enclosure (server or rack) and their foldable ribbon construction enables a wider variety of packaging configurations than other cabling options with virtually no loss in signal integrity performance.

With a wide variety of options, these cable solutions add up to higher performance, less risk of downtime, improved cable and thermal management for your design. 3M™ Twin Ax High Speed Cable Solutions meet the PCIe and Ethernet standards of today and are looking ahead to the future of high-speed, high bandwidth requirements of the future.

Source 1: PCI-SIG® DevCon 2022 Update by Al Yanes

Features

Internal Cable Assemblies

Tight folding/creasing
No min bend radius
Flexible
Maintains signal integrity when folded
Easily routed
Helps improve cable and thermal management
Efficient termination process with no wire routing errors
PCIe applications

External Cable Assemblies

Thin
Flexible
Easily routed
UL compliant
Portfolio designed for IEEE 802.3xx
Bandwidth options from 10-400Gbps
Improves serviceability of your server

Applications

Internal Cable Assemblies

High density system architectures
Server
PC Gaming
High performance computing
High performance test equipment

External Cable Assemblies

Server to switch
Server to storage
Other high speed test equipment
Top of rack to server

3M PCI Express Extender Assemblies and Jumpers

3M™ Twin Axial PCIe Extender Assemblies for PCIe® can be folded or simply routed to the peripheral card, providing a low loss extension from the motherboard to the peripheral device.

Tech Details

x4, x8 and x16 configurations
Straddlemount and SMT connector types
PCIe (85 ohm) applications

Possible Applications

Extender: Flexible Riser
Jumper: Motherboard to motherboard
PC gaming
High speed test equipment

3M DAC Assemblies

3M™ Direct Attach Copper Twin Axial Cable Assemblies are specially designed to be highly foldable and bendable with minimal to no impact on signal integrity and performance.

Tech Details

Available form factors: QSFP-DD, QSFP28, SFP 28, QSFP+, and SFP+
Bandwidth options from 10-400Gbps
Standard: IEEE 802.3

Possible Applications

Network Interface Card (NIC) to switch

3M Multi-channel I/O TwinAx Assemblies

3M™ Multi-Channel I/O Twin Axial Cable Assemblies are designed to support high density PCIe(R) applications and meet SFF-TA-1016 specifications. The thin, low profile Twin Ax cable allows for a wider range of routing options and supports extremely tight bend radii for each unique server configuration. Signal Integrity (SI) performance metrics are not degraded, even with multiple folds.

Tech Details

x4 and x8 configurations
SFF-TA-1016 Straight and right angle
PCIe (85 ohm) applications

Possible Applications

Motherboard or controller to drive backplane, midboard

3M SlimLine TwinAx Assemblies

The 3M™ SlimLine Twin Axial Cable Assembly (SFF-8654) is ideal for SAS and PCIe applications in today’s high density data centers. Its unique ribbon construction enables folding and bending without adversely impacting performance. The ribbon's foldability provides more freedom to design folded cable assemblies optimized to maximize system density, streamline system assembly and enhance airflow. Moreover, its low-profile enables it to be routed through narrow openings between server components.

Tech Details