Disaggregated & Composable Architectures: The Importance of Extended PCIe Cabling

Presented by Christopher Blackburn (TE Connectivity) | Brian Costello (TE Connectivity) This presentation will take a look into how disaggregated and composable architectures are evolving based on next generations of the PCIe and CXL protocols. Some of the architectures include memory pooling, GPU clustering, disaggregated NICs, and several others. These various architectures demand high performance and low latency connectivity solutions. Since there are several interconnect types that are applicable, an in depth comparison of the options and their tradeoffs will be explored. One of the tradeoffs is mechanical sizing and fit within industry standard device form factors such as OCP NIC, PCIe AICs, SFF-TA-1034, and the OU server. Another tradeoff is signal integrity performance for PCIe Gen 5 and Gen 6 and the ability to carry the necessary sidebands and control signals for PCIe and CXL. Throughout the presentation there will be a focus on compliance and relationships with other industry standards.