MediaTek Presents Active Optical Cable Technology with Microsoft Research to Improve Data Center Efficiency

Joint design uses MicroLED-powered light sources to solve critical trade-offs in data center transmissions.

A collaborative team of researchers from MediaTek, Microsoft Research, and other suppliers have successfully designed a next-generation Active Optical Cable (AOC) powered by miniaturized MicroLED light sources. This revolutionary design of an Active MicroLED Cable can significantly improve power efficiency in data centers compared to current technologies. The use of an Active MicroLED Cable would also deliver high-reliability like copper but at a much farther reach.

Today’s data center networks compromise between reach, power, and reliability. Electrical copper links are energy-efficient but limited to less than 2 meters. Traditional laser-based optical links reach farther but are power hungry and suffer from failure rates up to 100 times higher than copper. By combining MediaTek’s engineering innovation with Microsoft Research’s MOSAIC technology, this new Active MicroLED Cable design helps solve this trade-off by replacing traditional “Narrow-and-Fast” (NaF) laser channels with hundreds of parallel, low-speed MicroLED channels (“wide-and-slow”).

“This collaboration leverages both companies’ deep technology expertise and industry leadership and understanding of data center design to solve critical industry limitations and bottlenecks,” said Vince Hu, Corporate Vice President, MediaTek. “By miniaturizing MicroLED technology and integrating it into transceivers that are compatible with current data center equipment, the industry can transition to the new technology seamlessly.”

Demonstrating a fully-integrated end-to-end design, the joint project for the Active MicroLED Cable yields several notable breakthroughs:

• Power Savings: By using directly modulated MicroLEDs and eliminating complex Digital Signal Processing (DSP), the cable could achieve up to 50% lower power than conventional VCSEL-based AOCs.
• Copper-Level Reliability: Leveraging MicroLEDs’ simple structure, high endurance and temperature insensitivity, the link achieves higher reliability than current laser-based optics, matching the dependability of copper.
• Extended Reach: The design achieves high-reliability transmission like copper but at a much farther reach, making it ideal for massive cross-rack connections in AI training clusters.
• Scalability: Scaled-up bandwidth can be achieved by either increasing the number of optical lanes within a single cable or enhancing the per-channel data rate.
• Monolithic CMOS Integration: A single, custom-designed monolithic CMOS chip integrates the entire electronic functions, including the SoC logic, gear box, high-density MicroLED drivers, and high-sensitivity Transimpedance Amplifiers (TIAs). By consolidating these building blocks onto a single die, the design eliminates the power and latency overhead typically associated with multi-chip interconnects.
• Heterogeneous Integration: The MicroLED array and Photodetector (PD) array are directly bonded onto this monolithic CMOS chip. This advanced co-packaging approach removes the physical constraints of traditional wire-bonding and long interconnect routings, enabling a significantly smaller pixel pitch and ultra-dense channel arrays.

“The combination of Microsoft Research’s breakthrough technology with the engineering excellence of MediaTek and our other partners has opened the door to a major leap in AI datacenter efficiency,” said Doug Burger, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research. “This partnership will allow us to build systems that are more efficient, more reliable, lower cost, while enabling more powerful AI scenarios.”

The joint design of the Active MicroLED Cable can scale to 800 Gbps and beyond within standard QSFP/OSFP form factors. The two parties continue to explore opportunities in miniaturization and mass production readiness to advance the future development of gigawatt-scale AI data centers.

More information about next-generation Active Optical Cable (AOC)

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