During the second day of The Vision Show 2022 in Boston, A3’s director of standards development, Bob McCurrach, announced the release of v1.2 of the Camera Link HS (CLHS) standard. The new standard includes a major upgrade in speed.

The speed updates were achieved by adding speed grade 25, S25, and F3 connectors (MPO or QSFP+/QSFP28), with no changes needed in the existing IP core introduced in 2012. The CLHS discovery process ensures that new 25G products are backward compatible with existing 10G products, allowing for a low-risk development path.

Through its X Protocol, CLHS stands ready to move to speeds of 25 Gbit/s on an FPGA using 25-Gbit/s transceivers over fiber with SFP28, QSFP28, or MPO connectors.

“The standard is designed to take advantage of the ever-increasing speeds of proven telecom technology, and the IP cores enable smooth transitions from 3G to 10G and now to 25G,” McCurrach said.

The CLHS X Protocol IP core also supports F2 (SFP+/SFP28) fiber connections in addition to the newly added F3 QSFP+ (quad small-form-factor pluggable) and MPO (multifiber push-on) connectors. Additionally, the specification revision validates CLHS as having up to 100-Gbit/s (4 × 25 Gbit/s) available bandwidth using a single MPO connector.

According to Mike Miethig, chair of the CLHS technical committee and technical manager at Teledyne Digital Imaging, “Since CLHS was first introduced in 2012, the 64b/66b encoded X Protocol has been in production and has a long history of field-tested stability.”

The technical committee, he added, has a clear road map to 50 Gbit/s and beyond. “Again, we think this can be achieved with minimal changes to the standard and the IP core.”