The HiWire Consortium, a non-profit corporation supporting the advancement and adoption of HiWire active electrical cables (AECs), has released the HiWire Active Electrical Cable Specification Draft v0.1 to its members.
Similar to Ethernet standards developed and shared by multiple organizations including the IEEE 802.3 committees and many multi-source agreements (MSAs), the document defines the standards of the underlying electrical and mechanical specifications, and contains options that may enable significantly different implementations of the same functions. The HiWire Consortium also defines specific implementations of each AEC type based on real end user input in order to enable the following capabilities:
- Standardize the implementation of features within the existing IEEE 802.3 and MSA definitions to minimize the amount of adaptation the cable user needs to do in order to qualify different implementations of the same AEC.
- Push end user qualification requirements upstream by defining a test specification and certified third party test lab, so that users know that a HiWire qualified AEC meets their quality requirements.
- Implement a monitoring process to ensure that HiWire AECs are manufactured and tested to a consistent level of quality that meets tier 1 end user requirements.
AECs are a specific implementation of high speed Ethernet cables with embedded clock, data recovery and gear boxing functionality to provide a more robust and flexible solution than traditional direct attach copper or optical solutions. These AECs provide a deterministic attachment unit interface to the hosts and manage all of the details of the line equalization using embedded data recovery technology.
