SFP+ (Small Form-factor Pluggable Plus) and QSFP+ (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable Plus) are both types of transceiver modules used in data communication and networking devices. The main differences between the two are their form factor and the number of channels they support.

What is SFP+ transceiver module?

SFP+ is an enhanced version of SFP, supporting data rates up to 10Gbit/s. SFP+ supports 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel, 10-Gigabit Ethernet and OTU2 optical transmission network standards. It is also an industry standard supported by major telecom equipment suppliers. The original standard was mainly aimed at the application on 8G Fibre Channel, 10G Ethernet and 10G Fibre Channel, among which the electrical interface of the motherboard was a standardized serial interface called SFI. These applications have been expanded to include SONETOC-192, SDH STM-64, OTN G.709, CPRI wireless, 16G Fibre Channel and emerging 32G Fibre Channel applications.

What Is QSFP+ Module?

As the evolution of QSFP (quad small form-factor pluggable), the QSFP+ module is a compact, hot-pluggable transceiver used for 40Gbps speed. It is compliant with SFF-8436 and QSFP Multi-source Agreement (MSA). There are 4 independent 10Gbps data lanes in each direction to support 40Gbps aggregate bandwidth. QSFP+ has been widely used in 40GBASE-X Ethernet, breakout to 10GBASE-X Ethernet, data center aggregation and backplane applications, and datacom switch and router connections. The following figure illustrates the QSFP+ dimensions.

Comparisons in SFP vs SFP+ vs SFP28 vs QSFP+ vs QSFP28