Mellanox DynamiX QSA™, QSFP+ to SFP+ adapter, enables a smooth cost-effective connection between a single lane transceiver/cable and a quad lane port. The QSA provides the option to connect an SFP+/SFP transceiver or cable to a QSFP+ port of an Nx40GbE switch or network interface card (NIC).

The QSA should be installed into a QSFP+ port, and is intended to either connect a switch QSFP+ port to a NIC SFP port or connect a NIC QSFP+ port to a switch SFP port. For example, an SFP-based cable can be connected to Mellanox’s 40GbE ConnectX®-3 NIC and to the 48 x 10GbE SX1012 Ethernet switch. 

The QSA conforms to the SFF8418/8419 for the SFP side and to SFF-8436 for the QSFP+ standards and is thoroughly tested to meet strict quality requirements. The adapter has a QSFP+ form factor with a receptacle for SFP+ transceiver/AOC/DAC connector. The QSA provides a solution for integrating systems using different vendors’ equipment, since it is vendor agnostic and provides a direct path to the SFP unit’s memory. The QSA interoperates with all major optical module and direct attach copper cable vendors.

Its design ensures minimum loss on the conversion path between the QSFP+ cage and the SFP receptacle. The RF (high speed data) channel of the SFP receptacle is connected to lane 1 of the QSFP+ connector. The three remaining RF channels on the QSFP+ connector are not connected. The QSA is qualified for 10GbE SFP+ and 1GbE SFP transceivers meeting the Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) Transceiver Multi-source 

Agreement (MSA).