I have the need, the need for speed!

“I have the need, the need for speed!”  I am sure many of the readers can identify where this line originated from.  Yes, one of the all-time movie classics, Top Gun.  Granted some may think this is “corny,” but how true it is to our modern culture.  Like many of us can experience, seconds count in our society.

Seconds are like eternity, especially in the world of technology where the infamous hour glass on our computer or handheld can seem like a black hole.  While we have seen many innovative user interface gadgets, one may overlook the required backend equipment needed to interwork these devices with large amounts of data as fast as possible.

System integrators in this day and age are asked to package as much bandwidth capability as possible at next-generation speeds into chassis and box designs, not to mention at competitive costs.  It is a challenge where I gain a significant appreciation for our customers’ design constraints.  While the connector is just one component of system architecture design, it is instrumental as it dictates the pluggability to make these systems scalable into the future.

Molex’s Impact™ backplane connector system is at the forefront of leading-edge technology to assist our system integration customers with their development.  Customers need speed, density, low cost, modularity, flexibility and scalability in interconnect systems.  Molex has a solution to address all of these with the Impact™ product line.

Impact™ 100 Ohm was the first release of this product, which has evolved to include five different pair sizes (2-pair through 6-pair) and 3 different configurations (conventional, coplanar, mezzanine).  As customers have had to become more creative in packaging large amounts of bandwidth into a single chassis or box as stated above, orthogonal systems have become a preferred choice.

Impact™ Orthogonal was launched in coordination with our customers to address this need of reducing channel lengths and chassis cost by reducing the complexity in the midplane.  As with any choice there are drawbacks, and one of them with orthogonal architectures is thermal.  With system cards facing different directions, cooling a box with fast processing speeds is a challenge.  Molex came to the rescue again with the release of the Impact™ Orthogonal Direct system which removes the midplane, altogether reducing thermal constraints and cost.  As electrical requirements change and become more stringent, Molex again has stepped up to offer derivatives of a proven interconnect technology including Impact™ 85 Ohm Plus.

With every download on the internet, video streamed, email, text or Facebook post, somewhere in the network world a backplane connector is involved.  “The need for speed” will continue to be demanded by the market and is at the forefront of future backplane system designs.