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future-proof. Upgrades in a design will affect the transmitter and receiver, but replacing the physical fiber optic cable will likely be unnecessary. Fiber optic cables are also useful because a single fiber optic can carry light beams of the same wavelength in opposite directions, and the two beams will not interfere with each other. This makes fiber optic cables naturally bidirectional with no need for grounding or common reference. Finally, as fiber optic cables are not affected by external noise, they can transmit extremely high-speed signals over great distances (in the thousands of meters) while facing minimal signal integrity loss, which is why they have been hugely popular with long-distance Internet links (e.g., undersea cables). Recognizing the advantages offered by fiber optic systems, Samtec has developed the FireFly ™ Micro Flyover System ™ . FireFly is the first interconnect system that gives a designer the flexibility of using micro footprint high-performance optical and low-cost copper interconnects interchangeably with the same connector system. FireFly optical engines integrate all the transmitters and receivers needed for electrical-to-optical and optical-to- electrical conversion. This simple design approach allows engineers to focus on the core electrical properties of their designs. FireFly optical engines are capable of supporting 4-channel bidirectional and 12-channel unidirectional options with a variety of End 2 standard optical connector terminations. Samtec FireFly optical transceivers are up to four times smaller than standard pluggable solutions, which enables designs to increase cable densities while simultaneously reducing system weight. C h a p t e r 5 | A p p r o a c h i n g L i g h t S p e e d Current fiber optic cables used today are unlikely to cause bottlenecks in data transmission for years to come. Instead, the challenge is the transmitters and receivers as these are limited by current semiconductor technologies. This actually makes fiber optic cables future-proof as they rarely require upgrading, if ever." Benjamin Grab Manager, Applications Engineering Team, Optical Group, Samtec 20 Samtec Flyover ® Solutions Break Next-Gen System Architecture Constraints