New Connector Products Bring On the Future
By Bob Hult, Bishop & Associates Inc.

Chalk it up to increasing technical challenges, intense competitive pressure, advanced packaging demands, or several profitable years, but the connector industry is currently introducing new products at a furious pace. Trying to predict what the market is looking for in new connector technology has always been a difficult challenge. The costs and lead times associated with developing new connectors, and the production tooling for new connectors, is typically high. This is putting pressure on product managers to carefully allocate their resources and place their bets on the most likely winners. The connector industry has determined that market leadership depends, in part, on a continuous stream of new products to address emerging applications. 

In some cases, existing connector lines are being expanded to address a greater range of applications. Additional connector sizes are being tooled to allow finer granularity to fit an application, or new features have been added to increase design flexibility.

FCI Electronics has announced the availability of surface-mounted PCB headers to its AirMax VS high-speed backplane system. This is an attractive option, especially when mounting headers on both sides of a backplane, but may also offer some additional performance advantages.

The ability to offer a complete packaging solution has become an important factor in the connector selection process. ERNI Electronics has expanded its MicroSpeed 10 Gb/s mezzanine connector family with several new stacking heights.
 

ERNI has also added a MicroSpeed Power Module option to address increasing power demands in new applications.  Housings contain surface mount contacts rated at 6 to 8 amps, and are available in stack heights of 5 to 10mm. 

Tyco Electronics has announced a new version of the MultiBeam XL- E power connector. It combines the advantages of higher conductivity and thicker copper contacts to achieve a 20 percent higher current rating in the same space consumed as the standard product.

Evolving industry standards have proven to be a major stimulant to new product development. A host of connector suppliers, including Samtec, are packaging RJ-45 connectors in rugged housings to provide Ethernet connectivity capable of surviving the nasty industrial control and automation environment.  
 

The AMC and MicroTCA standards from PIGMG are getting a lot of attention for new equipment design, both within the target telecom market and beyond. The compact cost-effective architecture of MicroTCA is attractive to a broad market and has resulted in backplane edge connector introductions from Harting, ept, FCI, Tyco, Yamaichi, and others.

 EPT, Foxconn, Harting, and Tyco Electronics have tooled the unique MicroTCA, 72 signal/24 power contact power supply to backplane interface.

Positronic Industries has tooled the QB Series, 2 power/2 signal D-shell connector specified as the AC input interface for MicroTCA.

Continuing user demands for greater memory density and access speed has spawned the next- generation Fully-Buffered DIMM module. Molex recently announced the release of a compatible socket.

The standard F connector using the center conductor of the coaxial cable as a contact has long been the industry standard in the CATV industry. Trompeter recently announced the TripleProf three-piece design, which offers superior RF performance and reliability.

In addition to these extensions and enhancements, new connector families are entering the market. In some cases they represent the next logical extension of an existing product line, while others may be the first entry to a new market.

Molex has been a very aggressive second source to the Amphenol TCS high-speed backplane product line, including the flagship GbX family. The announcement of the I-Trac backplane connector series represents a departure from this second source strategy. This unshielded connector system uses broadside coupling construction to achieve 10+ Gb/s performance.

Molex has also been active in expanding their products designed to support power delivery, including bus bar terminations, power edge connectors, I-cool voltage regulator module sockets, as well as the new Power Dock Sr., which offers a maximum current density of 350 amps per inch.

FCI Electronics has published a 29-page catalog devoted exclusively to power-related connectors, including the recently announced HCI Connector System, which offers significantly increased power density and design flexibility. This connector family assists in system thermal management, with its low profile to minimize airflow obstruction, and vented housing to lower contact temperatures.

Amphenol TCS broke new ground in the high-speed backplane connector race with the introduction of their XCede interface at DesignCon 2007. Performance has been pushed to 20 Gb/s through a combination of dual diameter plated through-holes, the use of resonance damping materials, and internal skew compensation. The result has been a ruggedized, high-density interface designed to support backplane as well as midplane applications.

Both Molex and Tyco Electronics have continued the race to higher performance and density in pluggable I/O modules with the recent announcement of SFP+ interfaces.

Samtec is continuing to expand their extensive line of board-to-board connectors with the HD Mezz stacking connector. This new interface, jointly developed and sourced with Molex, performs at 8 Gb/s / differential pair, with a stacking height of only 20mm.

Responding to increasing demand for connectors that can efficiently distribute power, Samtec has introduced a series of new connectors under the PowerStrip board-to-board connector family. The PES/PET Series is a modular interface with up to 8 contacts rated at 28 amps and up to 40 signal contacts.

Samtec has also developed a new high density/performance backplane connector, which uses an integral flex circuit to reduce skew and impedance mismatch. This new 6 Gb/s connector series, designated RDPAF, features a simplified routing pattern and is terminated to the PCBs using solder ball technology.

JAE introduced the WT-25 mezzanine connector with a published bandwidth of up to 25 Gb/s. Stub-less contacts are on a 1.0mm pitch, which permits stacking heights as low as 10mm.

Even the niche custom connector market is receiving attention. These interfaces are often very application- and sometimes customer-specific, but if sufficient volume exists, suppliers may be willing to develop and tool the product.

Tyco Electronics is pursuing the automotive electronics market with custom Mechatronic Assemblies, which may consist of a combination of electronic and mechanical components.

The GAIN Connector was developed for galley-insert applications on commercial aircraft, and utilizes ARINC 810-standard interfaces. It has a spring-loaded, floating shell for blind-mating and accepts signal, power, and twinax contacts.

Increased attention to environmental pollution has resulted in most existing, and all new products, meeting the recently mandated environmental material standards, including RoHS and others. Connectors are now being offered in both leaded and lead-free versions. In many cases, the higher solder reflow temperatures required by lead-free solders have required the upgrading of plastic housing materials, of which all have generated entirely new part numbers.

Bishop & Associates Comments:

• Demands for greater packaging density, flexibility, and performance are being addressed with many new product introductions, most of which are existing product extensions or enhancements, while others represent next generation interfaces. 

• Connector manufacturers are looking for growth through penetration of new markets and emerging applications, which may require a different set of product features.

• Interfaces that conform to emerging industry standards are attracting multiple connector manufacturers. Designers can take advantage of documented performance, assured intermateability, and lower costs driven by multiple sources. Packaging standards supported by reference designs can shorten the design cycle and reduce the need for internal resources. From the connector supplier perspective, the name of the game is capturing market share.

• As electronic product manufacturing continues to migrate to Asia, the costs of tooling new connectors there may be lower, allowing suppliers to expand their product lines while increasing their participation in unproven, but potentially profitable markets.

• It appears that the days of customer-funded connector development are long gone. Connector suppliers are assessing customer input, assembling market potential, and creating production tooling for new connectors using flexible mold and assembly technology that is capable of quickly producing nearly custom connectors, at little or no customer expense.

• It may be premature at this point, but continuing expansion of wireless technology will eventually limit growth of long-established and profitable standard interfaces. The quest to replace these cash cows with new interfaces that can satisfy emerging density, speed, and design flexibility requirements may be a trend of the future.

Robert Hult
Director of Product Technology, Bishop & Associates, Inc.
Robert Hult has been in the connector industry for over 36 years. Hult began his career as a sales engineer for Amphenol. He joined AMP in 1972 and served in several management positions through 1996. In 1997, Hult joined Foxconn as group marketing manager for Intel, Chandler, Arizona, U.S.A. Prior to joining Bishop & Associates, Hult was the regional application engineering manager for Tyco Electronics.

Hult graduated in 1968 from Bradley University with a Bachelor of Science degree in electronics technology and a minor in business.