TE Connectivity announced that it will showcase data communications connectivity solutions in booth 811 at the DesignCon 2016 Expo in Santa Clara, California on January 20-21. TE will offer both working demonstrations and displays of the latest products delivering the speed, scalability, space-savings, reduced thermals, power and reach that design engineers need for their next project. TE's input/output (I/O) interconnects, internal interconnects, power connections, active optics and cable assemblies can be seen at the booth throughout the show.

These innovative solutions help address the ever increasing demand for products that are smaller, more energy efficient and faster. TE is also presenting several demonstrations highlighting its products' high performance capabilities and next-generation solutions in rack-unit (RU) based applications. Featured solutions will include: The advanced family of STRADA Whisper high speed backplane connectors, with an expanded range of configurations including direct plug orthogonal, mezzanine, and cables all delivering at least 56 Gigabit per second (Gbps); New Sliver internal interconnect cabled connectors that enable extended reach at 25 Gbps for on-board or embedded applications; and The new micro quad small-form-factor pluggable (microQSFP) high-speed I/O solutions with demonstrations on thermal performance, RU faceplate density and data throughput capabilities.

TE will be the first to develop microQSFP connectors and cages in accordance with the new specification released by the microQSFP Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) group on January 15, 2016. TE took the lead in forming the microQSFP MSA, and expects to have standards-compliant products in the market during the first half of 2016. microQSFP connectors provide QSFP28 connector functionality for networking equipment, but in a smaller generally SFP-sized form factor that provides 33% higher density.

microQSFP allows designers to fit up to 72 ports on a standard 1RU line card, saving significant design space. In addition, microQSFP products will offer significantly better thermal performance than any other pluggable solution on the market at present, requiring less energy to cool networking equipment and increasing the ease of system thermal design.