10 ms·

Novel hollow-core optical fiber transmits data faster with record low loss

136 points by Wingy 1y ago

GistNoesis 1y ago
Note here that "faster" here really means more speed and not an increase in the volume of data transferred : The light go through the air hollow-core so can go at near "c" (the speed of light in vacuum) speed, instead of being constrained to "speed of light in glass which is only "2/3 c". This allows reduce latency for long distance communication. https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/julyaug-2022/speeding-light-with-hollow-core-fibers https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/julyaug-2022/speeding-...
- hyperhello 1y ago
  So submarine cables were limited to 0.67c and now aren’t? Can this really work?
  - p_j_w 1y ago
    > So submarine cables were limited to 0.67c and now aren’t? I think it’s more like in the future they might not be. It’s anyone’s guess how mass production and deployment of this might look.
  - b3orn 1y ago
    For submarine cables there are two things here. The first is lower attenuation which allows for fewer amplifiers along the route making it overall cheaper. The second is lower latency. There have been cases where high frequency trading people went wireless to get lower latency because of the higher propagation speed of EM-waves in air. For really long distances you can go theoretically use satellite links to get lower latency than a submarine cable even if the total distance increases.
    - Figs 1y ago
      Someday, someone is finally going to work out how to do comms with neutrinos (which can pass directly through the Earth and come out the other side) and make so much money...
      - cryptonector 1y ago
        They are not, for the thing that would make neutrinos useful for communications is also the thing that makes them useless for communications. In order to use them for comms you'd need to produce such a huge number of neutrinos, and/or in a very colimated beam, that one shudders to think of how one might produce them!
        Figs 1y ago
        I suspect it may be possible using neutrino-antineutrino annihilation if there's a good way to produce streams of both types of particles, but... physics isn't my field.
        benlivengood 1y ago
        I think you could moderate a large nuclear fission reactor (on the edge of criticality) to produce detectable differences in neutrino rate on the other side of the world. KamLAND and a few other experiments detected multi-GW reactor anti neutrinos at 1000km[0] and so presumably tens of GW (easily [if perhaps not safely?] achievable briefly in current reactors) should be detectable over 8000km. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1738573316000498 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331...
- Sesse__ 1y ago
  It's true, but for most cases, the volume of a fiber is not the problem anyway. Latency is a problem most of us somehow bump into every day, while most fibers in the ground are nowhere near what you can push out of DWDM (e.g., off-the-shelf equipment will easily allow you to run 20x100Gbit over a single fibre, but many of them only carry a single 10Gbit or even 1Gbit link). Trans-continental is different, because you'll need amplifiers. Many, many amplifiers in a row. And those generally work well only in a fairly limited band. But unless you're doing submarine, bandwidth is almost never the problem. To make things worse, a lot of existing medium-haul fiber links are actually twice as long as you'd expect, due to the desire to cancel out dispersion; you first run the fiber e.g. 10km from place to place, and then run it through a large 10km spool (of a slightly different type of fiber) in the datacenter to cancel out the dispersion. This is slowly going away, but only slowly.
  - xeonmc 1y ago
    does using hollow core means you can do away with dispersion compensation?
    - Sesse__ 1y ago
      AFAIK yes, but if that's your goal, a far easier solution is to just use transmission standards that don't care about dispersion (coherent detection). E.g., all 100gig transmission already does not care about it.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    Sounds like it was something like CML for >200km runs. =3
  - Hikikomori 1y ago
    >To make things worse, a lot of existing medium-haul fiber links are actually twice as long as you'd expect, due to the desire to cancel out dispersion; you first run the fiber e.g. 10km from place to place, and then run it through a large 10km spool (of a slightly different type of fiber) in the datacenter to cancel out the dispersion. This is slowly going away, but only slowly. Only slowly? I haven't worked with very long haul wdm systems or sonet/sdh but I've never seen this. Maybe you mean much longer distances than 10km as we've had 10G-LR for ages that don't need this.
- PetitPrince 1y ago
  Thanks for your precision. Off-topic: It's true that "faster Internet" means "bigger Internet" in common language, just like in photography "faster lens" means "lens with more light gathering capability". I wonder if there's other field where "faster" is misused.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Higher bandwidth means less time to transmit a given packet. Just like more light gathering in a lens allows faster shutter speeds. If you had to move 100 tons of packages, which is going to be faster - a Lamborghini going 200 mph, or a tractor/trailer going 50mph? If you’re trying to set a speed record and don’t care about bringing anything along, which is faster? Neither meaning is necessarily wrong.
    - gchamonlive 1y ago
      Even if directly it isn't technically right to say it's faster, but with it's applications built upon such technology it manifests in these tasks being done faster. Makes sense. And the time for the lambo and the tractor will depend on the round trips each will have to do, so it depends on the medium.
- davidkuennen 1y ago
  This is actually much more important than the volume of data transferred. Having 33% lower latencies across the globe would be huge.
  - crote 1y ago
    On the other hand, it is only 33% - and that is an upper bound. Getting data to literally the other side of the globe currently takes about 100 milliseconds. How many truly novel applications open up by that latency dropping to 66ms? For short-distance stuff the latency is already low enough to be practically realtime. For long-distance stuff we're already fast enough for human-level applications (like video chat), but it's not dropping enough for computer-level applications (like synchronous database replication). I'm sure some HFT traders are going to make an absolute fortune, but I doubt it'll have a huge impact for most other people.
    - notimetorelax 1y ago
      I generally agree with you, but! Video or audio calls between EU and the US still have a much higher chance of speaking up at the same time and it’s due to lag. If the latency is decreased by 33% it might be a game changer.
    - batmansmk 1y ago
      I made my master thesis on real-time, with a chapter where I experimented with different levels of jitter and latency. Jitter is the consistency of the latency, is it like a locked 66ms or sometimes does it go to 200ms. Jitter is more impactful than latency for a wide range of applications, from gaming to music and video call. Having a lower latency allows for lower jitter, or less jitter while keeping the same latency. Today’s discovery is huge imo.
      - lillecarl 1y ago
        Doesn't jitter come from the switches and routers along the path? I have a hard time seeing a fibre having significant jitter.
      - 1y ago
rtrgrd 1y ago
All the hedge funds sniping orders right now lol
- diamondage 1y ago
  Low latency starlink orders on hold
bragr 1y ago
How does one splice a cable with such a complex geometry? Is that a solved problem already?
- nicholasbraker 1y ago
  You probbaly need a specialised crew to do this and as such such fiber won't be installed in your own neighbourhood for your Fiber-to-the-Home connection anytime soon I guess. But, maybe in a few decades it will. When such technology becomes practical for the large telco's it will be implemented soon as this saves on attenuation equipment.
  - bob1029 1y ago
    The termination/splicing of HCF would likely occur at long haul endpoints, not in neighborhoods and last mile. There wouldn't be any meaningful upside to this. Crews are currently splicing fibers reliably in <5 minutes using gear from Amazon or AliExpress. We don't want to mess with something that is working this well.
- binbag 1y ago
  I can say from direct experience doing research with hollow-core fibres that they are not easy to splice either to each other or to standard fibre. Imagine trying to use heat to melt together a pipe and a solid cylinder without creating a mess.
chasil 1y ago
Interesting quotes from the article: "There has not been a significant improvement in the minimum attenuation—a measure of the loss of optical power per kilometer traveled—of optical fibers in around 40 years... "The new design maintains low losses of around 0.2 dB/km over a 66 THz bandwidth and boasts 45% faster transmission speeds... "The new fiber is a kind of nested antiresonant nodeless hollow core fiber (DNANF) with a core of air surrounded by a meticulously engineered glass microstructure. "The team believes that further research can reduce losses even more, possibly down to 0.01 dB/km, and also help to tune the fiber for low-loss operation at different wavelengths. Even the losses achieved, however, open up the potential for longer unamplified spans in undersea and terrestrial cables and high-power laser delivery and sensing applications, among others."
- Sesse__ 1y ago
  > "The new design maintains low losses of around 0.2 dB/km over a 66 THz bandwidth and boasts 45% faster transmission speeds... 0.2 dB/km is already a pretty common loss ratio, though. It's true that you won't get that over the entire 1310–1550nm range (the ~35 THz range commonly in use), but you generally can't use all of that for long-haul links anyway due to the way repeaters work. More interestingly, they promise 0.06 dB/km or so in the most relevant bands. If they can keep that up, it would mean less need for amplifiers, which is a Good Thing(TM).
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
nmstoker 1y ago
UK, so what's the betting no one got a patent on this?!
PaulKeeble 1y ago
I really didn't see this coming. After 40 years of fibre I just thought we should roll this out across the globe as the solution to every home and we had data transmission solved and likely wouldn't need an upgrade until we found something substantially better, maybe quantum entanglement communication. Turns out it was improvable and now the insane amounts of fibre we have already deployed is now obsolete.
- mschild 1y ago
  The currently installed fibre cables work just as well as they did a year ago. Calling them obsolete is a bit of stretch. Besides, I think most homes are not even close to using the full capability of what fibre can offer nor do a lot of people need that extra bit of speed to browse Instagram/Facebook/YouTube/Whatever else.
  - PaulKeeble 1y ago
    An old computer and processor work just as well as they did when made but they are still obsolete because something better has been released. This does make all the fibre obsolete, doesn't make it useless but the replacement will reduce latency.
    - lazide 1y ago
      That’s not how it works. A hammer is not more obsolete for driving a nail because pneumatic nail guns exist. Using just a hammer on a commercial framing job is silly, however, because pneumatic nail guns work better. Everyone still has a hammer ready though, because it is still needed. Using a pneumatic nail gun to hang a picture is silly, because it is so overkill (and expensive) that it actively makes it harder to do the job. This tech doesn’t obsolete existing fiber for last mile because the extra cost associated with producing and splicing it dwarfs any potential gains (which would likely be in the 10’s of ns). If it is proven to work well, this may obsolete existing transoceanic/transcontinental fiber runs, where the latency difference will be noticeable enough the cost is worth it. However, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will actually turn down any of these existing lines. The different is not so much that the old lines are useless. If, eventually, this new fiber is at the same price point and as easy to work with as the current fiber? then the current fiber will be obsolete.
bob1029 1y ago
This could be a big deal for multiplayer gaming. Right now there is enough margin in splitting east/west regions in latency sensitive games. With HCF, the argument for talking to one central region starts to prevail. For a game like counter strike with client-server, you don't actually need to go coast to coast. The server is the authority. If everyone can talk to Dallas or Ohio in <50ms they're probably going to have an OK time.
anotherpaulg 1y ago
Below are some great videos on the physics and practicalities of single mode fiber. They are Thorlabs videos, so are slanted more towards the use of SMF in a laser lab rather than a telecom setting. They reference a lot of the theory, but also provide a good intuition about how and why SMF works so well. https://youtu.be/FbOXRuBQt_U https://youtu.be/FbOXRuBQt_U https://youtu.be/HvJeXakc8Kc https://youtu.be/HvJeXakc8Kc
jimmySixDOF 1y ago
HCF came up in the recent IEEE Hot Interconnect Microsoft talked a few min about deploying in their HPC datacenters for AI latency reduction important to All Reduce/Gather operations typically in rings that need to converge and where slowest process dictates the pace https://youtu.be/vuo6KfdRRZw&t=479 https://youtu.be/vuo6KfdRRZw&t=479
thenthenthen 1y ago
Skin effect in fiber?!
curtisszmania 1y ago
[dead]

136 points by Wingy 1y ago

Note here that "faster" here really means more speed and not an increase in the volume of data transferred : The light go through the air hollow-core so can go at near "c" (the speed of light in vacuum) speed, instead of being constrained to "speed of light in glass which is only "2/3 c". This allows reduce latency for long distance communication. https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/julyaug-2022/speeding-light-with-hollow-core-fibers https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/julyaug-2022/speeding-...

hyperhello 1y ago
So submarine cables were limited to 0.67c and now aren’t? Can this really work?
- p_j_w 1y ago
  > So submarine cables were limited to 0.67c and now aren’t? I think it’s more like in the future they might not be. It’s anyone’s guess how mass production and deployment of this might look.
- b3orn 1y ago
  For submarine cables there are two things here. The first is lower attenuation which allows for fewer amplifiers along the route making it overall cheaper. The second is lower latency. There have been cases where high frequency trading people went wireless to get lower latency because of the higher propagation speed of EM-waves in air. For really long distances you can go theoretically use satellite links to get lower latency than a submarine cable even if the total distance increases.
  - Figs 1y ago
    Someday, someone is finally going to work out how to do comms with neutrinos (which can pass directly through the Earth and come out the other side) and make so much money...
    - cryptonector 1y ago
      They are not, for the thing that would make neutrinos useful for communications is also the thing that makes them useless for communications. In order to use them for comms you'd need to produce such a huge number of neutrinos, and/or in a very colimated beam, that one shudders to think of how one might produce them!
      - Figs 1y ago
        I suspect it may be possible using neutrino-antineutrino annihilation if there's a good way to produce streams of both types of particles, but... physics isn't my field.
      - benlivengood 1y ago
        I think you could moderate a large nuclear fission reactor (on the edge of criticality) to produce detectable differences in neutrino rate on the other side of the world. KamLAND and a few other experiments detected multi-GW reactor anti neutrinos at 1000km[0] and so presumably tens of GW (easily [if perhaps not safely?] achievable briefly in current reactors) should be detectable over 8000km. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1738573316000498 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S173857331...
Sesse__ 1y ago
It's true, but for most cases, the volume of a fiber is not the problem anyway. Latency is a problem most of us somehow bump into every day, while most fibers in the ground are nowhere near what you can push out of DWDM (e.g., off-the-shelf equipment will easily allow you to run 20x100Gbit over a single fibre, but many of them only carry a single 10Gbit or even 1Gbit link). Trans-continental is different, because you'll need amplifiers. Many, many amplifiers in a row. And those generally work well only in a fairly limited band. But unless you're doing submarine, bandwidth is almost never the problem. To make things worse, a lot of existing medium-haul fiber links are actually twice as long as you'd expect, due to the desire to cancel out dispersion; you first run the fiber e.g. 10km from place to place, and then run it through a large 10km spool (of a slightly different type of fiber) in the datacenter to cancel out the dispersion. This is slowly going away, but only slowly.
- xeonmc 1y ago
  does using hollow core means you can do away with dispersion compensation?
  - Sesse__ 1y ago
    AFAIK yes, but if that's your goal, a far easier solution is to just use transmission standards that don't care about dispersion (coherent detection). E.g., all 100gig transmission already does not care about it.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  Sounds like it was something like CML for >200km runs. =3
- Hikikomori 1y ago
  >To make things worse, a lot of existing medium-haul fiber links are actually twice as long as you'd expect, due to the desire to cancel out dispersion; you first run the fiber e.g. 10km from place to place, and then run it through a large 10km spool (of a slightly different type of fiber) in the datacenter to cancel out the dispersion. This is slowly going away, but only slowly. Only slowly? I haven't worked with very long haul wdm systems or sonet/sdh but I've never seen this. Maybe you mean much longer distances than 10km as we've had 10G-LR for ages that don't need this.
PetitPrince 1y ago
Thanks for your precision. Off-topic: It's true that "faster Internet" means "bigger Internet" in common language, just like in photography "faster lens" means "lens with more light gathering capability". I wonder if there's other field where "faster" is misused.
- lazide 1y ago
  Higher bandwidth means less time to transmit a given packet. Just like more light gathering in a lens allows faster shutter speeds. If you had to move 100 tons of packages, which is going to be faster - a Lamborghini going 200 mph, or a tractor/trailer going 50mph? If you’re trying to set a speed record and don’t care about bringing anything along, which is faster? Neither meaning is necessarily wrong.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    Even if directly it isn't technically right to say it's faster, but with it's applications built upon such technology it manifests in these tasks being done faster. Makes sense. And the time for the lambo and the tractor will depend on the round trips each will have to do, so it depends on the medium.
davidkuennen 1y ago
This is actually much more important than the volume of data transferred. Having 33% lower latencies across the globe would be huge.
- crote 1y ago
  On the other hand, it is only 33% - and that is an upper bound. Getting data to literally the other side of the globe currently takes about 100 milliseconds. How many truly novel applications open up by that latency dropping to 66ms? For short-distance stuff the latency is already low enough to be practically realtime. For long-distance stuff we're already fast enough for human-level applications (like video chat), but it's not dropping enough for computer-level applications (like synchronous database replication). I'm sure some HFT traders are going to make an absolute fortune, but I doubt it'll have a huge impact for most other people.
  - notimetorelax 1y ago
    I generally agree with you, but! Video or audio calls between EU and the US still have a much higher chance of speaking up at the same time and it’s due to lag. If the latency is decreased by 33% it might be a game changer.
  - batmansmk 1y ago
    I made my master thesis on real-time, with a chapter where I experimented with different levels of jitter and latency. Jitter is the consistency of the latency, is it like a locked 66ms or sometimes does it go to 200ms. Jitter is more impactful than latency for a wide range of applications, from gaming to music and video call. Having a lower latency allows for lower jitter, or less jitter while keeping the same latency. Today’s discovery is huge imo.
    - lillecarl 1y ago
      Doesn't jitter come from the switches and routers along the path? I have a hard time seeing a fibre having significant jitter.
    - 1y ago

rtrgrd 1y ago

All the hedge funds sniping orders right now lol

diamondage 1y ago
Low latency starlink orders on hold

bragr 1y ago

How does one splice a cable with such a complex geometry? Is that a solved problem already?

nicholasbraker 1y ago
You probbaly need a specialised crew to do this and as such such fiber won't be installed in your own neighbourhood for your Fiber-to-the-Home connection anytime soon I guess. But, maybe in a few decades it will. When such technology becomes practical for the large telco's it will be implemented soon as this saves on attenuation equipment.
- bob1029 1y ago
  The termination/splicing of HCF would likely occur at long haul endpoints, not in neighborhoods and last mile. There wouldn't be any meaningful upside to this. Crews are currently splicing fibers reliably in <5 minutes using gear from Amazon or AliExpress. We don't want to mess with something that is working this well.
binbag 1y ago
I can say from direct experience doing research with hollow-core fibres that they are not easy to splice either to each other or to standard fibre. Imagine trying to use heat to melt together a pipe and a solid cylinder without creating a mess.

chasil 1y ago

Interesting quotes from the article: "There has not been a significant improvement in the minimum attenuation—a measure of the loss of optical power per kilometer traveled—of optical fibers in around 40 years... "The new design maintains low losses of around 0.2 dB/km over a 66 THz bandwidth and boasts 45% faster transmission speeds... "The new fiber is a kind of nested antiresonant nodeless hollow core fiber (DNANF) with a core of air surrounded by a meticulously engineered glass microstructure. "The team believes that further research can reduce losses even more, possibly down to 0.01 dB/km, and also help to tune the fiber for low-loss operation at different wavelengths. Even the losses achieved, however, open up the potential for longer unamplified spans in undersea and terrestrial cables and high-power laser delivery and sensing applications, among others."

Sesse__ 1y ago
> "The new design maintains low losses of around 0.2 dB/km over a 66 THz bandwidth and boasts 45% faster transmission speeds... 0.2 dB/km is already a pretty common loss ratio, though. It's true that you won't get that over the entire 1310–1550nm range (the ~35 THz range commonly in use), but you generally can't use all of that for long-haul links anyway due to the way repeaters work. More interestingly, they promise 0.06 dB/km or so in the most relevant bands. If they can keep that up, it would mean less need for amplifiers, which is a Good Thing(TM).

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

nmstoker 1y ago

UK, so what's the betting no one got a patent on this?!

PaulKeeble 1y ago

I really didn't see this coming. After 40 years of fibre I just thought we should roll this out across the globe as the solution to every home and we had data transmission solved and likely wouldn't need an upgrade until we found something substantially better, maybe quantum entanglement communication. Turns out it was improvable and now the insane amounts of fibre we have already deployed is now obsolete.

mschild 1y ago
The currently installed fibre cables work just as well as they did a year ago. Calling them obsolete is a bit of stretch. Besides, I think most homes are not even close to using the full capability of what fibre can offer nor do a lot of people need that extra bit of speed to browse Instagram/Facebook/YouTube/Whatever else.
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  An old computer and processor work just as well as they did when made but they are still obsolete because something better has been released. This does make all the fibre obsolete, doesn't make it useless but the replacement will reduce latency.
  - lazide 1y ago
    That’s not how it works. A hammer is not more obsolete for driving a nail because pneumatic nail guns exist. Using just a hammer on a commercial framing job is silly, however, because pneumatic nail guns work better. Everyone still has a hammer ready though, because it is still needed. Using a pneumatic nail gun to hang a picture is silly, because it is so overkill (and expensive) that it actively makes it harder to do the job. This tech doesn’t obsolete existing fiber for last mile because the extra cost associated with producing and splicing it dwarfs any potential gains (which would likely be in the 10’s of ns). If it is proven to work well, this may obsolete existing transoceanic/transcontinental fiber runs, where the latency difference will be noticeable enough the cost is worth it. However, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will actually turn down any of these existing lines. The different is not so much that the old lines are useless. If, eventually, this new fiber is at the same price point and as easy to work with as the current fiber? then the current fiber will be obsolete.

bob1029 1y ago

This could be a big deal for multiplayer gaming. Right now there is enough margin in splitting east/west regions in latency sensitive games. With HCF, the argument for talking to one central region starts to prevail. For a game like counter strike with client-server, you don't actually need to go coast to coast. The server is the authority. If everyone can talk to Dallas or Ohio in <50ms they're probably going to have an OK time.

anotherpaulg 1y ago

Below are some great videos on the physics and practicalities of single mode fiber. They are Thorlabs videos, so are slanted more towards the use of SMF in a laser lab rather than a telecom setting. They reference a lot of the theory, but also provide a good intuition about how and why SMF works so well. https://youtu.be/FbOXRuBQt_U https://youtu.be/FbOXRuBQt_U https://youtu.be/HvJeXakc8Kc https://youtu.be/HvJeXakc8Kc

jimmySixDOF 1y ago

HCF came up in the recent IEEE Hot Interconnect Microsoft talked a few min about deploying in their HPC datacenters for AI latency reduction important to All Reduce/Gather operations typically in rings that need to converge and where slowest process dictates the pace https://youtu.be/vuo6KfdRRZw&t=479 https://youtu.be/vuo6KfdRRZw&t=479

thenthenthen 1y ago

Skin effect in fiber?!

curtisszmania 1y ago

[dead]