The QSFP28 passive copper cable[1] contains four high-speed copper pairs, each operating at data rates of up to 25Gb/s. Each QSFP28 port comprises an EEPROM providing product information, which can be read by the host system.

NVIDIA unique-quality cable solutions provide power-efficient connectivity for short distance interconnects. It enables higher port bandwidth, density and configurability at a low cost and reduced power requirement in the data centers.

Rigorous cable production testing ensures best out-of-the-box installation experience, performance and durability.

LinkX-certified cables are 100 percent tested in actual NVIDIA GPU and switching systems to ensure optimal signal integrity and the best end-to-end performance. NVIDIA DAC cables are designed for use in supercomputers and hyperscale systems that have very stringent requirements. All NVIDIA cables are tested to bit error ratios (BER) lower than IEEE industry standards. They’re available in lengths from 0.5m to 7m, in small form-factor pluggable (SFP) and quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP) options, and with 10G/25G-non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and 50G-4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4).

The low-loss 25G- NRZ-based DAC cables support the IEEE CA-N and CA-L specifications. When used at <2 meters, they enable running switches with NO-forward error correction (FEC) or reduced-FEC to save latency and power.

DAC cables contain no electronics, consume zero power, and offer the lowest latency and insertion loss. In NVIDIA DGX™ A100 GPU systems, DACs are used to link GPUs to network switches and to create Ethernet storage fabrics (ESF) with hard-disk-drive (HDD) and flash subsystems.