400 Gbit Ethernet Full Profile PCIe x16 Card

Terabit Ethernet PCIe Card

Consilia was requested to create a layout for this 400 Gbps PCIe card. The component density was reaching the physical limits of the manufacturing process.

Thermal management posed a significant challenge due to the excessive power dissipation of the packet processing FPGA.

Hardware Design from PCB Concept to Production

Consilia was responsible for the PCB design from scratch.

The first challenge was the selection of the proper stack-up and the PCB manufacturer. There are only a few manufacturers in the world that have and can process materials designed for this kind of card. 

After weeks of comparing various materials and stack-ups, the PCB layout started.

The placement of the components was an input for the thermal management system team that started thermal simulations.From then on, the thermal management system team and the layout team cooperated closely. The Development teams discussed the change of placement of each component from the point of view of signal integrity and thermal management.

The result is a board with 18 Layers with a component coverage exceeding 77 % of the board area.

When the board was finished, a DFM (Design for Manufacturing) analysis was conducted at the selected assembly house to ensure that the cards could be manufactured and assembled at the target line.

Fast and Flexible Packet Filtering

The card can be programmed in P4 – a high-level programming language optimized for packet forwarding. The packets can be inspected in real time at a full speed of 400 Gbps and thrown away immediately if detected as malicious. 

Consilia provides turnkey solutions for PCB layout of any complexity ranging from 2-layer automotive PCBs up to xx-layer high-speed telecom cards and backplanes touching manufacturing limits.

High Class PCB

The critical parameters of the board are PCB with 18-layer stack-up, high-speed differential pairs, blind/buried and stacked vias/µvias, back-drilling, FPGA chip with 3000 pins, and over 1800 components on PCB.

For cooling, a highly efficient copper profile cooler is specially designed for externally provided airflow, with efficient cooling of up to 100A power consumption.

Innovative Producer in the Infrastructure Field

Our client operates and develops the national e-infrastructure for science, research, and education which encompasses a computer network, computational grids, data storage, and a collaborative environment. The client offers a rich set of services to connected organizations.