Amphenol AssembleTech :Making High-Speed Connections Feasible for Autonomous Vehicles

As autonomous-vehicle technology progresses from driver assistance to full autonomy, driverless cars are going to be a reality soon. Alongside providing mobility to non-drivers, it offers significant benefits like increased personal safety, decreased environmental harm, and reduced transportation costs. With the development of autonomous driving technology, a growing number of customers realize that stable and reliable data interconnects will be the first problem that the autonomous driving control system needs to solve. The high-speed interconnection cables commonly existing in the market are difficult to meet the vehicle's stringent application environment and the stable transmission of high-speed signals. Amphenol AssembleTech is changing the scenario with its advanced connectors designed to be easy to use and affordable. AssembleTech combines its absolute leading position in data center high-speed cable solution and integrates its leading advantages in automobile connection cable solution. “We have developed a cable solution that can not only satisfy high speed signal transmission (PCIe Gen4/Gen5 and 25G Automotive Ethernet), but also satisfy automobile related specifications (USCAR2 or LV214),” says Alan Yang, GM of the company.

AssembleTech’s CooLink 1.0 and 2.0 products are a new breed of cable assembly technology that was developed for use in autonomous vehicle networking compute architecture.

The company has deployed CooLink products for autonomous driving GPU/CPU/FPGA compute systems as an interconnection for PCIe Gen 4/5 applications. It provides customers with a stable and reliable cable solution between high-speed signal transmissions in the L4 or L5 autonomous driving control systems. AssembleTech’s CooLink product is a scalable cable to board solution that meets the current and future demands for high data rate signals required to support compute modules within L3/L4/L5 SoC's designed for autonomous vehicles. With continuous development changes to meet consumer needs and safety requirements for self-driving technology, the CooLink product increases the use of relevant number of sensors. The related performance within the compute box is also increasing to support the increased number of high definition of cameras from 1080 p to 4 k camera. Alongside connectors for autonomous vehicles, the company offers products like Extremeportport- Swift, Extremeport-Mini Cooledge IO, Extremeport-Flash, Extremeport-Lightyear, Extremeport-Z-Link, Ultraport- Low Profile SlimSAS, Ultraport-SlimSAS, OCuLink, HD mini aSAS, mini SAS, SATA, DP2.1, HDMI2.1, USB4.0, and customized WireHarness. These products are widely used in the IT Datacom data center, 5G Base station, Consumer Electronics, autonomous vehicles, and Green Energy.

Amidst market competition, AssembleTech’s strategy is to ensure the reliability of its high-speed data transmission assemblies while ensuring that the assemblies meet the standard specification of automotive. “This is a big challenge for many cable manufacturers and automotive developers. To solve such problems, we repeatedly visit the world's top system developers and chip developers to understand the customer focus, demand and pain point,” says Yang. The company then integrates internal resources based on the problems the customer faces and merge efforts with the system and chip developers to meet the customers required design specification.

AssembleTech has a strong footprint in Xiamen, Fujian, P.R.China since 2003. The company has then expanded to the US. In the past decade, AssembleTech grew its size by ten times. In 2019, the company expanded its manufacturing footprint to Vietnam to accommodate growth. AssembleTech’s design and manufacturing center supports customers worldwide in a leading position in various industries. “We focus on bringing value to our customers, our employees, and our shareholders,” adds Yang. With the forward vision of Level 4 autonomy, AssembleTech sees a growing demand for last-mile delivery and fixed-route shuttles to transform road freight and ride-hailing services and is working toward meeting these needs.