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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

LVDS connector/cable

Good morning.

I am starting to design a board that mounts an Altera FPGA. This board needs to communicate with another that mounts the same FPGA. The communication takes place via 10 LVDS lines, each about 600 MB/s. Now I'm looking for a connector and interconnect cable, I've seen that there are many manufacturers and many solutions, but I wanted to ask if anyone had direct experience and maybe he could recommend a connector/cable pair for ia application.

The boards are parallel to a distance of a few centimeters, I also thought a flat cable FPC / FFC, could be a solution?

Thanks in advance,

Federico.

3 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    there are many manufacturers

    --- Quote End ---

    Go look on the Samtec site. They make the Altera HSMC connectors, the Xilinx FMC connectors, and Mictor connectors. These parts are all used for transceivers, so would easily transport 600Mbps.

    I've used VHDCI/SCSI cables and connectors for 250Mbps, but probably wouldn't use them for much higher than that.

    The other option is to use the PCB as a connector, eg., PCIe, mini-PCIe, etc, use the PCB as an edge connector. Depending on your mechanical arrangement, that might work too.

    Cheers,

    Dave
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    There's a ton of choices for those speed/distance.

    A couple I've used: ERNI SMC, SAMTEC QSH/QTH, SAMTEC EDGE RATE.

    I think ERNI SMC is rated for 3 Gbit/s, while SAMTEC QSH/QTH and EDGE RATE are rated for at least 10 Gbit/s I think.

    But FPC/FFC should also work fine.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    It sounds like you control both ends of this link? If so, and depending on what family you're targeting, it may make sense to use gigabit transceivers instead of LVDS. You may even be able to aggregate all 10 channels into one 6Gbps link.