NVIDIA 980-9I93O-00H002 | 400G OSFP to 4x100G QSFP56 Breakout Cable, 2m, HDR

Q: What is the difference between this cable and an Active Optical Cable?
A: This is a passive copper DAC cable that uses electrical signaling over copper conductors for distances up to 2 meters. Unlike Active Optical Cables (AOC), it requires no external power and contains no active electronic components, making it a cost-effective solution for short-reach, high-density rack interconnects.

Q: Can this cable support both InfiniBand and Ethernet protocols?
A: Yes, this cable supports both InfiniBand HDR (400Gb/s to 4x100Gb/s) and Ethernet (400GbE to 4x100GbE) protocols. Protocol support depends on the host equipment configuration and compatibility with NVIDIA ConnectX-6 or later adapters and Quantum-2 switches.

Q: What equipment is this cable compatible with?
A: This breakout cable is designed for NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand switches with OSFP ports and legacy HDR/200GbE equipment with QSFP56 ports, including ConnectX-6 host channel adapters. It enables migration from HDR 100G infrastructure to 400G NDR switches while maintaining backward compatibility.

Q: How does the twin-port configuration work?
A: The cable features one OSFP connector supporting twin-port operation (2x200Gb/s) that splits into four individual QSFP56 connectors (4x100Gb/s). Each pair of QSFP56 ports corresponds to one 200Gb/s channel within the OSFP connector, utilizing 8 total differential pairs across the cable.

Q: What are the typical use cases for this breakout cable?
A: Common applications include connecting 400G spine switches to multiple 100G leaf switches, linking high-performance computing nodes with mixed-speed infrastructure, and creating flexible data center topologies where a single high-speed uplink fans out to multiple lower-speed connections within the same rack or adjacent racks.