Intel's New 800 Gbps MXC Cable Will Speed Up Data Centers

Intel's Silicon Photonics project will be come to the end of reality. Famous for gorilla glass manufacturer Corning will sell the cable, which then allow in a data center bendable connections with up to 800 Gbit / s . Intel's MXC cables are gradually becoming a reality. The Silicon Photonics technology is to be brought in the third quarter of 2014 to the market and sell it according to some media reports.

Upto 300 meter long cables with a data throughput of 800 Gbit/s are possible now with these. To achieve high speeds Intel is by the dozen bundle glass fiber strands into a single cable and reach as per direction 800 Gbit/s output. The bundling of strands in it is nothing special. For a long time, there is the problem of insufficient bandwidth over fiber, so about QSFP was developed as a standard, the switch and server connections with 40 Gbit / s allows using Ethernet, the data direction uses two fibers and also for other standards such as Fiber Channel is used.

The enormously high integration of Intel, however, is something special and should be affordable anyway. Whole 64 fiber connections means Intel is in a small plug. Currently, just 25 Gbit / s per fiber are provided. When calculated the 1.6 Tbit / s that go in full duplex mode over the cable or rather the wiring harness. Intel is already planning to double the bandwidth to 50 Gb/s on each direction and then 1.6 Tbit/s can be reached. A high degree of integration is not only in the cables necessary, but also to the transceiver section. Intel also promises an easy deploy ability.

The cables may be more bent than conventional fiber optic cable. The bending radius is specified with only 7.5 mm. Also, foreign bodies can no longer influence the signal quality, since the light beam was increased. The Intel has been presented at the recent Intel Developer Forum in September 2013. It is part of the field Silicon Photonics and provides a connector with the name MXC.

Multimode fibers are used, which are commonly used for short-range and 1310 nm wavelength light. The cables are to be used primarily for connections in data centers. For more information on MXC - compounds can be found in an older MXC White Paper in PDF format from Intel and Corning.