Active Silicon Launched 100 Gbps Fiber Frame Grabber
The new FireBird 1xCOF100G enables high-bandwidth, long-distance image acquisition via fiber optics.
Updated on Oct. 5, 2026 in Semiconductors
Active Silicon has released the FireBird 1xCOF100G, a frame grabber card designed for industrial systems requiring high-speed data acquisition. This device supports data transmission rates of up to 100 Gbps over fiber.
Why it matters
The board addresses growing demand for faster, long-distance image processing in high-bandwidth industrial applications. It marks a shift in standardizing CoaXPress over Fiber interfaces for modern machine vision systems.
The FireBird 1xCOF100G utilizes a PCI Express 4.0 x8 interface and a QSFP28 port to achieve 100 Gbps total throughput. It employs an ActiveDMA engine to manage data transfers between the fiber-optic input and the host system.
The players
Active Silicon
A developer of image acquisition hardware, including frame grabbers and embedded vision systems for industrial and scientific applications.
The details
The card functions as a frame grabber—a device that captures digital image data from a camera—to facilitate processing on a host computer. By utilizing CoaXPress over Fiber technology, the hardware transmits data over longer distances than conventional copper cables. It integrates standard protocols including GenICam and GenTL Producer to ensure compatibility with existing machine vision software frameworks.
Timeline
October 5, 2026: Active Silicon introduced the FireBird 1xCOF100G.
The Tech Race
This release follows the ongoing industry migration toward fiber-optic backbones to overcome the distance limitations inherent in legacy copper cabling. It competes directly against existing high-speed frame grabbers that struggle to maintain 100 Gbps signaling integrity over longer physical runs.
Engineers building high-bandwidth vision systems can now utilize this standard half-length PCI card to replace shorter-range copper connections. The device is designed for immediate integration into systems that already support GenICam-compliant software.
The takeaway
This launch highlights the accelerating shift toward fiber in industrial machine vision architectures. Watch for future performance benchmarks involving large-scale sensor arrays to confirm if the 100 Gbps throughput remains stable under sustained, high-load conditions.
Further reading
For more on the hardware driving high-speed data transmission, explore our Semiconductors section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Embedded Computing Design.
