China Information and Communication Technologies Group Corporation (CICT) has successfully developed a 13,824-core ultra-high-density optical cable, which has already been mass-produced. The cable made its public debut at the 21st Optics Valley of China International Optoelectronic Exposition in Wuhan, the capital of Central China’s Hubei Province, on May 18.
It’s China’s first optical cable with more than 10,000 cores and it has the highest fiber count in an optical cable in the world.The cable can meet the construction needs of ultra-large-scale artificial intelligence data centers and facilitate the interconnectivity of computing power clusters with more than 100,000 AI accelerator cards.
The cable’s outer diameter is only 40 millimeters, equal to the diameter of a conventional 6,912-core cable. This is attributed to its modular precision structural design, achieving a fiber density of up to 11 cores per square millimeter. A single 13,824-core cable can replace 48 conventional 288-core optical cables with a diameter of 19 millimeters each, saving more than 90 percent of pipeline resources.
This optical cable fills a key domestic gap, further strengthening China’s optical communications industrial chain. It will also significantly improve cabling efficiency and reduce operations and maintenance costs at computing centers.
(Executive editor: Zuo Shihan)
