Amphenol AssembleTech :Enabling High-Speed Connections for Autonomous Vehicles

As the number of automobiles on the road increased, so did the number of streets and roads built to support transportation. In the modern-day, as the demand for autonomous vehicles grow, intelligent vehicles have integrated more CPUs and GPUs within the computing system to support and process numerous data sets from the sensory equipment. Each CPUs and GPUs within the computing system, requires a high-speed interconnection and multiple mainboards to operate as one unified system. In an effort to meet this need, Amphenol AssembleTech developed the CooLink series products that can meet the automotive specification and address the high-speed SI (Signal Integrity) performance characteristics. More importantly, the company collaborates with top global industry leaders to co-verify the reliability of CooLink products and to ensure that they can adapt to newer requirements and applications in autonomous driving.

Amphenol AssembleTech Co., Ltd, or AST for short, is an individual proprietorship of Amphenol Corporation. The company is renowned as an industry leader in providing high-speed cable solutions where product offerings are used within IT Datacom, 5G Telecom, and Autonomous Driving vehicles. The company aspires to provision autonomous driving vehicles through stable, high-speed data and signal transfer. In the same light, AssembleTech has applied for invention patents in China and the US to protect their unique designs and has also optimized the PCB and cable design to upgrade CooLink series products to support PCIe Gen4 and Gen5 applications.

The majority of cables currently used in automotive vehicles can only handle low-speed control signals, relatively ineffective in meeting autonomous supercomputing requirements. As more performance-intensive sensors such as highresolution cameras, Lidar and radar are implemented in and around vehicles, the influx of data fed into the computing hardware of autonomous vehicles increase exponentially. These systems require a high bandwidth cable solution to support GPU, CPU, and high-speed communications.In order to meet this demand, Amphenol AssembleTech, with its experience in cable assembly, has developed a high-speed and high-density CooLink series product. This technology, complete with automotive-grade design, can meet the USCAR2 and GMW3191 standards as well. From a mechanical performance point of view, the CooLink cable features an enhanced design with two latches and a CPA design feature to enhance the mechanical connection. Compared to the legacy cable solution for data center application, the CooLink can survive in harsh environmental conditions, maintaining high-speed SI performance in high temperature and high vibration environments. The CooLink series products have also been verified based on the SAE USCAR 2 performance specification.

Amphenol AssembleTech's General Manager, Alan Yang, discusses a scenario in which the company delivered CooLink products to a major US corporation for high-speed connection CPUs, GPUs, and different mainboards. "The CooLink cable is a very critical component for the whole autonomous vehicle ecosystem, particularly to guarantee the safety of the vehicle and passengers. The product has been embedded into an autonomous driving system two years ago; Thus far, CooLink is working exceptionally well in the system," says Alan. He also highlights another instance where the company supplied CooLink products to a company in China, and the customer went on to deploy at least 200 autonomous driving vehicles in the market for testing, and to date, the cables have performed flawlessly.

AssembleTech has had a significant presence in Xiamen, Fujian, P. R. China ever since 2003; The Company then extended its services to the United States. In the last decade, AssembleTech has grown tenfold. In order to accommodate growth, the company expanded its manufacturing footprint to Vietnam in 2019. In terms of future plans, Alan discusses how the company presents CooLink products to PCIe automotive groups and is also working on upgrading the products to support PCIe Gen6 performance. "We are also developing an automotive-grade high-speed PCIe cable to provide high-speed PCIe connection between two different high performances ECU in the near future," adds Alan.