Microsoft-backed boffins show mega speed boost with hollow-core fiber A team of networking boffins has published fresh research on hollow fiber cables that it claims could offer the lowest ever recorded optical loss for a fiber – meaning the signal would weaken less as it travels, leading to faster speeds and lower latencies. Abstract illustration of a global datacenter What happens when we can …
Up to a point. If DC's currently "need" to be on the M25 to serve London, then when this tech hits the market, they can be 50% further away but that still won't get them outside the Home Counties, eg Welwyn instead of Potters Bar, or Bracknell rather than Chertsey.
Might find some grid capacity that's scarce within or on the M25, and reduce the land costs a bit, but isn't going to address power generation sources and cooling needs.
> Lessens the argument that data centres need to be near large populations because of latency.
Never ever! That's like saying that because ingredients got cheaper the end product will get cheaper too... :-D
Besides, there are two cases: Those who need speed (like trading) will gladly invest in this new technology and still want to be as close to the stock market as can be, and those who don't really care about the speed gain won't waste their money and keep their existing lines (and data centers).
Traders won't buy it because the stock markets already artificially delay network traffic to make all traders equal distance (by fiber) away.
Even if you don't care about speed, increasing the distance between repeaters will lower the cost of long distance, especially undersea, cables.
There is another enshittification that needs this, and that's the first thing that came to my mind when I read the latency improvement: that's high frequency trading. Just another way to make money out of thin air that will bring our economy to a complete collapse sooner than later.
Make Microsoft listen to customers?
To be fair, Microsoft DO LISTEN to their customers. Just not the customers' wants and needs, but they grab the customers' data. This will just make the transfer of the data back to the mothership more efficient and increase the data grab.
small English market town...
Will Nadella drop by on a flying visit one day, just like Ginny the Chopper did to IBM Hursley a few miles up the road...
https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/30/ibm_ceo_rometty_tries_to_erase_the/
"I've got an idea that as air pressure increases, the index of refraction shoots up for gasses."
You are thinking that this fiber under significant hydrostatic pressure and the hollow inner part were gas filled and equilibrated with the external pressure that the RI of that gas would negatively impact the optical properties of hollow fiber ?
Given the general state of lunacy sweeping the globe there might be a market for cylinders of ultra pure high pressure vacuum. ;)
Wow, this is a really exciting development! Hollow-core fiber finally achieving losses below 0.1 dB/km is huge — it could seriously reduce latency between datacenters and improve mobile networks. A 45% speed boost over conventional fiber and potential 5–10× wider bandwidth could transform everything from AI model training to autonomous vehicles and remote surgery. Also, the energy savings from needing fewer amplifiers is a nice bonus. Can’t wait to see this scaled up in the next few years!
