Microsoft Acquires Startup Developing High-Speed Cables for Transmitting Data

Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing "hollow core fiber (HCF)" technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. From a report: Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren't disclosed, will "expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure" and "serve Microsoft's cloud platform and services customers with strict latency and security requirements." HCF cables fundamentally combine optical fiber and coaxial cable. They've been around since the '90s, but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. The idea is that light can travel faster through air than glass; in a trial with Comcast in April, a single strand of Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.

"HCF can provide benefits across a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government," Girish Bablani, CVP of Microsoft's Azure Core business, wrote in a blog post. "For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers' ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region."

and when someone with an backhoe hits the cable?

[Joe_Dragon]

and when someone with an backhoe hits the cable?
How hard is it to repair?
what will the cost be to run this from an medical provides office to just the local ISP?
and what the will the cost be?
comcast 400 GB only $19,000/mo with an 10TB cap.

Re:and when someone with an backhoe hits the cable

[TomWinTejas]

The same thing that happens when glass core fiber is hit with a backhoe... it's fusion spliced. Technology evolves and gets cheaper as it matures, this is nothing new. If this is ever deployed beyond patch cords between servers in datacenters where ultra low latency matters, it's going to be adopted by those selling bandwidth to those where ultra low latency matters. Financial companies are already paying premiums for low bandwidth services between Chicago and NYC via microwave to shave milliseconds of latency. They can afford to front load the development costs for such deployments because they stand to make significantly more in the process. The more they invest the cheaper the technology becomes for the rest of us.

But companies like Lumen and Zayo who own a majority of the fiber in the ground aren't going to rip out their fiber and lay new hollow core fiber on a whim. It's a huge investment and most customers don't care enough to pay a huge premium right now. The investment timelines on these projects are measured in decades, where 40-50 years is the norm. Customers that get IRUs for fiber get 20 to 25 year terms. So don't expect the innovation to bleed down to the residential market anytime soon.

Re:

[im_thatoneguy]

I can see big ROI advantages though for Microsoft. If they have something like Gamepass that is extremely latency sensitive, they can extend their service area by 76% at the same or lower latency if they lay Hollow Core Fiber to a few POPs.

It might be cheaper to run HCF to a metro area than deploy a whole new datacenter. Fiber is expensive, but running a datacenter is even more expensive.

Re:

[Spazmania]

The same thing that happens when glass core fiber is hit with a backhoe... it's fusion spliced.

How do you splice *hollow core* fiber with an electrical arc? Wouldn't that seal it solid all the way through? Like it does with regular fiber?

Re:

[haruchai]

"The same thing that happens when glass core fiber is hit with a backhoe... it's fusion spliced"
Which can take hours or days to repair. Ask me how i know

Re:

[jabuzz]

The difficulty in the splicing is ensuring that the core remains unobstructed. This makes splicing harder and consequently more expensive.

In the residential market the reduction of latency is going to be under a millisecond on average, on what I would call the access layer aka from the local "exchange" to your house which will for most people be under 20km. Nobody is going to replace standard single mode fibre for that. If you are further out you are probably just going to be happy to have high speed connec

Re:

[DanielRavenNest]

Hollow core fibers are fixed the same way as solid core fibers, with fusion splices. Hot glass sticks to itself. The the splicing machine aligns the ends, heats them, then pushes them together. Takes about 10-15 seconds.

HCF is used when ping time is critical, since light travels 1/3 faster in air than glass. I don't think that matters to a typical medical office. Higher bandwidth is more for big data customers backing up to the cloud.

Re:

[Spazmania]

You've conflated latency and throughput. Don't underestimate the throughput of a minivan loaded with hard drives.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

meh hdds are inefficient to much space occupied bi motors and magnets etc, bot a minivan loaded with 8TB NVMEs (not in bulky retail packaging) would probably yield more aggregate transfer. And yes i realize some packaging is needed to avoid damage but I suspect that it can be done safely in a lot less space than a traditional retail package there seems to be a lot of clers plastick that is there for other reasons then protecting the device.

Re:

[jabuzz]

Indeed HCF is of limited value. All it does is reduce latency. Technically it might be able to increase transmission due to the lower dispersion, but with data rates over 1Tbps per fibre the marginal increase from that is insignificant.

I can see it being used in submarine cables and cross-country cables. However, unless you are a bottom feeding HFT then they are an unnecessary expense in the access layer. If you do the maths on a 20km GPON link the reduction in latency is less than a ms, so really who cares

Great Idea

[NFN_NLN]

> but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes.

I'm going to take the next step and create a startup that uses a hollow center channel that's a vacuum instead of air. Maybe I can get bought by Microsoft when they need that incremental speed boost in 2030.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

I'll wait for the $1000 per gram Monster cable version so I can get more fidelity in my MP3s.

Light travels faster in air ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

True. Usually 1.5 times faster. That is the usual refractive index of glass.

And it is a fact. Not "idea".

Hollow core fiber...

[DanielRavenNest]

Will make the Internet a series of tubes. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will be avenged:

"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, " -- Stevens, in 2006.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

Will make the Internet a series of tubes. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will be avenged:

Fundamentally, he wasn't wrong -- and it was a good analogy for people, like him, born in 1923.

Re:

[UnknownSoldier]

Wait, that actually happened [wikipedia.org]? WOW.

It's not higher speed

[CaptainLugnuts]

It's lower latency. There are trading firms that would pay through the nose to get data to the exchange an extra dozen microseconds faster than their competition.

Re:

[im_thatoneguy]

It'll most likely be higher speed as well.

The limit on many file transfers with a single thread/worker/queue over WAN is the latency.

Re:

[CaptainLugnuts]

That's not on the fiber, it's on the equipment driving the fiber.

Why buy a "startup"

[fahrbot-bot]

Microsoft Acquires Startup Developing High-Speed Cables for Transmitting Data

They could have just bought Monster Cable [wikipedia.org]. :-)

Re:

[bn-7bc]

no the peopöe willing to pay for cross continent fiber runs to shave microseconds want real results not over priced hype :)

Digitalphile data cables?

[mnemotronic]

This reminds me of the ultra-expensive "oxygen-free" copper cables sold to gullible audiophiles for outrageous prices. I think I'll make a "hydrogen-filled" hollow tube and claim it's faster than regular air. Then a "xenon-filled" version and claim it's even faster.

Re:

[mistergrumpy]

Good business plan! As someone pointed out above vacuum is the fastest. Xenon is slower than air. Hydrogen is faster than air, and helium is faster yet. If you want to go with rare isotopes for the audiophiles 3He is the best except vacuum.