Share This article

Ahead of the Intel Developer Forum next month, Intel and Corning are teasing a new optical interconnect technology capable of 1.6 terabits per second. Dubbed MXC, the interconnect is designed to supercharge the interconnection of servers in data center environments, where current networking technologies are struggling to keep up with the massive growth of cloud computing. The tech could eventually percolate down to consumer devices, though — don’t forget that Intel’s Thunderbolt interface was originally an optical interconnect called Light Peak, but switched to copper to reduce costs. Intel would love to bring optical interconnects to the consumer market, it’s just a matter of doing it cost-effectively.

Intel’s MXC sounds like it’s a brand new system, consisting of a new MXC connector that replaces RJ45 (the socket used by the Ethernet ports on the back of your wireless router) and small form-factor pluggable transceivers (SFP) — and a new fiber technology called Corning ClearCurve LW. The abstract on the IDF website says that Intel has been working with Corning on MXC for two years, with Intel bringing its expertise in silicon photonics and Corning focusing on the new fiber. There is very little information about the connector/interface, other than it’s smaller than RJ45 and SFP, and that the connector can carry up to 1.6 terabits per second (Tbps).

To put this into perspective, the current top-end networking standards are 40GbE and 100GbE, which support 40Gbps and 100Gbps respectively. The IEEE is currently working on a standard for 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), which is due to be ratified around 2017. From the IDF abstract, it sounds like MXC is all about the underlying link technology — the connector, the cabling, the transceiver — while something like 400GbE would actually manage the signaling and data transfer over that link.