Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella， has just declared at the Microsoft Ignite2024 conference, declared that the next 24 months plan to deploy 15,000 kilometers of empty-core fiber for AI big models and data center connectivity, expanding network capacity and arithmetic power.
Over the past year, Microsoft has made significant datacenter investments in 15 countries across six continents, with more than 60 datacenter regions, more than any other provider, Nadella said. Microsoft is innovatively trying to build these data centers in a sustainable way. At the network level, Microsoft has innovated with hollow-core fiber. This technology delivers an absolute breakthrough in terms of speed, bandwidth, and energy efficiency - in fact, it offers significant improvements over traditional fiber. At OFC this year, Microsoft once again demonstrated that fiber loss is at the lowest level ever seen in optical fiber. This low fiber loss is critical for data center-to-data center connectivity. Microsoft plans to add another 15,000 kilometers of lines over the next 24 months.
And Microsoft isn't stopping at the data center. Microsoft is extending the cloud to the edge. That means bringing Azure to the edge of Azure Local. Azure extends its services across hybrid, multi-cloud and edge locations through a centralized control plane. It brings Azure services to customers' distributed locations, whether in retail, hospitality, or manufacturing, so they can run their mission-critical workloads, including some new AI workloads, across the cloud and the edge.
In recent years, Microsoft has continued to accelerate its presence in the air-core fiber space. According to a related report, Microsoft has deployed air-core fiber in its UK data centers and enhanced its submarine cables with multi-core fiber technology. In terms of network capacity enhancement and arithmetic expansion for data center connectivity and big AI models, Microsoft announced this year that it has partnered with Lumen Technologies, a network system provider, to expand the network capacity and arithmetic power of its AI data centers to meet the growing market demand for AI services, especially to support the strong arithmetic demand for generative AI services such as Microsoft Copilot, and to utilize the Microsoft Cloud to further drive Lumen's digital transformation.
In November 2023, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced for the first time at his organization's Ignite 2023 the new generation of Hollow Core Fiber Technology (HCF), a technology that replaces the traditional glass core in optical fibers with gas or vacuum, using air as the optical fiber's This technology replaces the traditional glass core in optical fiber with gas or vacuum, and uses air as the optical fiber's light-conducting medium, which can realize faster light speed, lower delay and higher performance, and increase the speed of communication transmission up to 47%.
As for the layout of hollow core fiber, in December 2022, Microsoft acquired Lumenisity, a British hollow core fiber manufacturer, which is mainly dedicated to commercializing the breakthrough technology of hollow core fiber.Lumenisity's hollow core fiber technology exceeds the attenuation of traditional germanium-doped single-mode fibers (SMFs) in the O- and C-band, and single strand Lumenisity Microsoft looks forward to utilizing the company's technology and team of industry-leading experts to accelerate its innovative network and infrastructure development, further expanding the capabilities of Microsoft's global cloud infrastructure and meeting the stringent latency and security requirements of Microsoft's cloud platforms and customer services.
