MediaTek and Microsoft Research are collaborating to develop a next-gen microLED-powered Active Optical Cable (AOC) solution. The two companies announced that they expect to commercialize this technology with industry partners by the end of 2027.
Microsoft's Active-MicroLED-Cable is designed to significantly improve power efficiency in data centers compared to current technologies. It will offer high reliability, like copper cables, but at a much farther reach (copper is limited to less than 2 meters).
Microsoft says that traditional laser-based optical links reach farther than copper, 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”).
The joint design of the Active MicroLED Cable can scale to 800 Gbps and beyond within standard QSFP/OSFP form factors.
