This paper examines the market dynamics and resulting technical challenges affecting high speed copper based cable assemblies and connectors that meet the requirements for 40 and 100Gb/s links in next generation systems. The subjects covered will include market trends and systems designs driving these bandwidth needs, industry standards intended to meet those needs, and the challenges these pose to the I/O link suppliers. Some of the challenges we will
explore include signal conditioning, I/O port density, cable assembly testing and certification and recognition of the cable assembly by the system upon insertion of the cable in the system. This paper also explores and projects where all of these technical challenges may be leading and what that potentially means to high speed cable & I/O link suppliers.
