Free resources / Associations
Digitaliztalized online free resources and associations introduction from component to server switch system
After my first series of writing for IO industry introduction in Chinese, my second series article and following will be focusing on technical sharings from the association specs and general thermal design knowledge. Hope this series can catch attention but not think the IO thermal design is as nothing as in past. Things are happening……
Before the technical sharing, I would like to share a few open applications on the internet. As we know nowadays it’s digitalized world. we have seen fancy coding programmer growth as there is no hardware limitation and open resources in forums. While CAD design and CAE simulation are so little been mentioned in past decades, there are many open resources.
There are two powerful tools not only free but zero hardware limit as it’s on cloud computing. Feel free to check out the below key points extracted from platforms. Nowadays, engineers not only can watch youtube to learn things, but the free handy tools are also available. Don’t miss it!
Next, let’s look into the associations in the industry.
It was so confusing when I started working. There are so many documents on the internet while little industry knowledge freshman has. The learning curve is so slow and complex to understand&organize technical information in different fields such as the mechanical mating datum for thermal simulation setup and so on. So two articles come out to have a guiding overview to let mechanical and thermal engineers better understand the IO industries.
Open Compute Project. General introduction for IO transceiver
In this article, it’s introduced how high-speed IO is represented in roles in the industry
Sever/storage:
Network Interface Card requires a lower height to accommodate more slots in the system, but the thermal challenge is to figure out IO design within the feasible working condition by hot air from hot aisle upstreams.Switch:
The front panel is giving large thermal dissipation capability to cool high-power transceivers for long reach distances. The challenge will be pulling a large amount of heat from a pluggable transceiver surface.Considering the domination in the market, Switch applications are taking the major market share. IO connector companies develop different products to support higher and higher thermal channeling in ganged/stacked cages.
QSFP-DD /QSFP MSA. MSA spec breakdowns
In this section, we went through the MSA documentation in an easy and organized construction from Plug/Cage/Connector and subgroups in each. After showing the 8x bandwidth evolution in form factors from SFP to QSFPDD, we concentrate on QSFP/QSFPDD examples to show how to extract key pieces of information from pages.
The white paper published on MSA shows what a thermal design in IO looks like in system applications and thermal engineers’ daily work.
1. Layout configuration:
Ganged cage in the belly to belly or Stacked cage in single-sided.2. Thermal model and simulation:
Heatsink design optimization by simulation and thermal model release for customer3. Thermal validation and correlation:
Validate thermal design output and manufacturing quality from limit samples, then simulation correlation for contact resistances.
With all the above information in MSA specification reading and thermal design understanding, we are not only aware of what thermal design works done in components but also understand why it is of critical value in the system application.
After all, hope the above introduction is an enjoyable starting for interests. Feel free to check out more (Free source / Associations) of my writing and leave comments. Cheers~
