Differences in uses of AOC and DAC

1. Cable

A cable is a cable assembly with fixed connectors at both ends. The connectors used are the same as the interfaces of optical modules, but compared to optical modules, high-speed cables do not need to be matched with jumpers. The connectors of DAC do not have expensive optical lasers, which greatly saves costs and power consumption, and becomes a low-cost and high-efficiency high-speed data communication solution to replace optical modules.

2.DAC

2.1 Passive Copper Cable

The connector of the passive direct copper cable does not contain active components. The passive direct copper cable provides a direct electrical connection between the corresponding cable ends. It can achieve a transmission distance of 7m at a data rate of 10Gbps or 40Gbps with low power consumption.

2.2 Active Copper Cable

The connector of the active direct copper cable contains active components and driver chips (linear amplifiers) for transmitting and receiving electrical signals. These active components help improve signal quality and provide longer cable distances, reaching a transmission distance of 15m at a data rate of 10Gbps or 40Gbps with low power consumption.

3.AOC

Active Optical Cables (AOC) are optical fiber jumpers with optical transceivers at both ends, which require external energy to complete the mutual conversion of optical/electrical signals.

As a main transmission medium for high-performance computers and data centers, active optical cables ensure the stability of transportation and the flexibility of application, and are more common in high-density applications.

DAC has low cost and low power consumption, but short transmission distance, mainly concentrated in application scenarios of 1 meter to 5 meters, with simple product structure, few parts, high reliability, and suitable for short-distance applications requiring low cost and low power consumption.AOC has a long transmission distance, and the commonly used length ranges from 1 meter to 30 meters, but AOC products of more than 300 meters can also be customized, but the cost is high and the power consumption is large, which is suitable for scenarios requiring convenient routing or long transmission distance.