WORCESTER, MA -- Although some designs are pushing 10 Gb/s, a handful of connector and backplane manufacturers agreed that most designs continue to fall in the 3.125 to 6 Gb/s range.

Exhibiting at DesignCon East this week, Tyco and FCI, among others, claimed most interest remains centered in the mid-range, despite talk of high er speed applications.

Booth traffic at the show was very light on Tuesday afternoon.

Tyco said the bulk of designs it sees are in the 3.125 to 5 Gb/s range. The company expects an intermediate step – maybe 7.5 Gb/s – before designs starting hitting 10 Gb/s on a wide basis. 

A few booths away, FCI agreed the industry is still wokring in the 3.125 to 6 Gb/s range. Most applications just don't have the need yet for higher speeds, they said.

The day's keynote was delivered by Michael Paczan, CTO of the systems and technology group at IBM. He spoke on the Power.org initiative, which IBM is pushing. The initiative focuses on open standards and specifications.

Other show notes:

Northrop Grumman's design and backplane group, Interconnect Technologies, said designers are encountering problems due to an absence of high-speed halogen-free laminates. “Designers are stuck," said a company spokesman. ” “They need a waiver or redesign to put more of the high-speed product in daughtercards.” Design work needs to be scalable from the 3.15 to 6 Gb/s range to 10 Gb/s.

Endicott Interconnect Technologies was displaying its Hyper-Z BGA package. The package holds four CSPs, and has nine metal layers (five power/ground and four signal planes), 0.001" lines/spaces, all on a Teflon substrate. 

Teradyne has put in an ENIG process, and launched a five-person development group for its PCB fabrication business, a first for the company.

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