Credo Introduces 1.6T Optical Cable With 50-Meter Reach for AI Data Centers

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. introduced its 1.6T ZeroFlap Active Light Cable on Oct. 12 for AI data-center scale-out and front-end networks, with a planned reach of up to 50 meters.

The pluggable optical interconnect combines arrays of micro-emitters and photodetectors with flexible fiber bundles. Its design is specified to draw 12 watts per cable end. Credo plans to begin shipping the cable in 2027.

The cable splits 200G lanes into multiple lower-rate optical channels using non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation. It also includes channel redundancy and ZeroFlap link monitoring. Credo designed those features to support failover without interrupting a link when a channel fails.

The product’s 100-million-hour mean time between failures (MTBF) is a target, and customer-site performance has not been established. Credo positions the cable between copper connections, which it describes as limited by distance, and traditional pluggable optics, whose power use and cost it cites as drawbacks.

Alongside the product announcement, Credo launched a workstream with the Open Compute Project to develop a specification for short-reach micro-emitter optics. Initial participants include AFL, ams OSRAM, BizLink, Foxlink, Heraeus Covantics, SENKO and YOFC, as well as an unnamed hyperscaler.

The planned specification will cover power use and efficiency, signaling, parallelism, physical form factors, link budgets and compliance. Credo is targeting Open Compute Project approval of the specification in 2027.