Description
ept’s Colibri® connector is a 2-row x 0.5mm, shielded, two piece, robust and flexible SMT stacking interconnect system designed for parallel board to board stacking applications and is now available in 10 Gbps and 16 Gbps versions.
Both the plugs and receptacles of the Colibri range are available for pin counts of 40, 80, 120, 160, 200, and 220. They are designed to meet requirements according to specifications not only of PICMG COM Express®, but also of SFF-SIG Core Express® X86, PCIx Gen 3, 10G Ethernet (10G Base-KR), USB 3.1 Gen2, PCI Express 4.0 and nanoETXexpress. The plug connector has a ground shield for use on carrier boards and the receptacle connector for use on COM modules has ground pins. Completely new is a 440-pin version, in which two 220-pin Colibri ® connectors are held together by a mounting frame. The mounting frame guarantees an exact positioning of the two components to COM Express specifications, arranged according to PICMG® COM.0 and will be removed after soldering. Tape-and-reel packaging, is perfect for fully automated assembly. In response to customer demand, these high-speed connectors are now also available as a Heavy Au version for deployment in challenging environments. A contact coating of 0.76 µm gold ensures reliable contacting and excellent signal integrity even under challenging conditions such as shocks, vibration, and other environmental stresses. Thanks to the thicker gold layer, the operating temperature range is extended to -40°C to +125°C.
The contact design, which is optimized for high data transfer rates, means that the Heavy Au version of the Colibri connector achieves data rates up to 16 Gbps and beyond, all the while maintaining great signal integrity. In order to guarantee outstanding signal quality at these high data transfer rates, ept optimized the contact design for the entire Colibri connector series.
The 3.0 release of the successful COM Express computer-on-module standard includes a new pinout type. This enables a faster data transfer rate of up to 10 Gbps, thereby expanding the applicability of COM Express in terms of server applications. Of course, the PCB connectors required to connect the baseboard and the COM module need to meet these increased requirements.
Unlike the type 6 pinout, the new type 7 pinout does not include any audio or video interfaces. As such, it does not represent a substitute for type 6; instead, it expands the range of COM Express applications in terms of server applications. The audio and video interfaces on the previous pinout type have been replaced with four 10 GB Ethernet KR lanes and 32 PCI Express lanes to increase the data transfer rate. These new features are relevant for use in video on demand in the telecom segment, for example, as well as medical or security technology applications.
Colibri® products are compatible with other popular connector systems on the market like Tyco and FoxConn. This has been proven by signal integrity tests carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute. The testers compared Colibri® connectors to other COM Express connectors and also tested the two connector types in combination, achieving excellent results in each scenario.
A 16 Gbit/s independent test report is available on request.
