From June 23 to 25, 2024, the 9th China Fiber Connect Forum (CFCF2024), an annual grand event in the optical communication industry organized by Fiber Online and the Chord Industry Research Center, was held in Suzhou.

Sino-Telecom Booth

The conference focused on hot topics and innovative product technologies in the optical communication market, aiming to promote in-depth exchanges and market information sharing among enterprises in the industry. Sino-Telecom, keeping up with the development trends of AI and high-speed interconnection, showcased products such as the new Metro WDM (DCI) and SR3000 series switches at the conference.

"Will Coherent Technology Sink?" Themed Forum

On June 25, 2024, at the CFCF2024 roundtable forum titled "Will Coherent Technology Sink?", Sino-Telecom Product Director Hou Lei introduced the application of coherent communication technology in backbone networks, metro networks, and edge access networks.

Hou Lei stated that coherent technology, with its advantages of high capacity and high signal-to-noise ratio, is widely used in long-distance business transmission in backbone and metro networks. As bandwidth demands increase rapidly, coherent technology is expanding from backbone networks to metro and even edge access networks. Sino-Telecom actively participates in the construction of open optical networks, with its DCI-BOX/modular WDM products achieving market share and comprehensive ranking first in China Telecom and China Unicom. The company is committed to continuously broadening the application scenarios of coherent technology in metro and access networks.

For county and township WDM networks, which currently mainly use 10G services, low-cost 100G coherent modules are being gradually introduced to adapt to service speed upgrades and the comprehensive bearing needs of large customers/5G backhaul. These networks typically adopt ring topologies, with ring lengths mainly below 150km, and are cost-sensitive.

Operators' new metro networks will adopt the Spine-Leaf architecture of data centers to achieve non-blocking traffic forwarding within the metro area, forming unified bearing for home broadband, 5G, and enterprise dedicated lines, with characteristics such as network-business separation, control-forwarding separation, and intelligent management. This will stimulate more application scenarios for DCI equipment and the sinking of coherent modules.

On the other hand, as distance and rate increase, coherent modules are continuously sinking towards medium and short-distance transmission. Sino-Telecom is working with partners to create a simplified coherent optical network architecture, balancing cost, power consumption, spectral efficiency, and scalability, with key focuses on low-cost local oscillators, DSP simplification, and IQ modulator performance optimization.

Through this roundtable meeting, industry experts conducted in-depth exchanges on the current status and trends of coherent communication technology in different application scenarios, providing important references for the innovative application of coherent technology in metro and edge access networks.

"Open Optical Network Linking the New Era of Intelligent Computing" Themed Speech

With the explosive growth of AIGC applications, the demand for AI computing power has surged, with single clusters developing towards a scale of 100,000 GPU cards, corresponding to a power supply demand of 100MW. At the same time, large-scale GPU interconnection poses new challenges to network latency, bandwidth, and reliability, with a 0.1% packet loss rate potentially causing 30%-50% computing power loss. Therefore, the key to AI is to coordinate computing power, power supply, and transport capacity (intelligent computing network). In the future, distributed deployment of intelligent computing clusters will become a new trend to alleviate power supply pressure.

Based on its technological accumulation in IP and optical transmission, Sino-Telecom insists on the open and decoupled network development concept, and cooperates with partners to create a long-distance inter-machine intelligent computing network solution within 100 kilometers based on RoCEv2.

Optical Transmission Products: By creating new DCI box-type WDM products (single wave 400G or 800G), optical and electrical layers are decoupled, reducing power consumption and size, facilitating unified management and operation.

Switch Products: By creating high-density intelligent computing switches with domestic chips, directly outputting 400G color light modules ZR/ZR+, eliminating the electrical layer, further reducing failure points and costs.

In the future, Sino-Telecom will continue to adhere to the open and decoupled network planning concept, jointly exploring with domestic GPU manufacturers and network card manufacturers, focusing on small and medium-sized intelligent computing cluster construction and long-distance interconnection scenarios. This will contribute to the healthy development of the AI intelligent computing network ecosystem, building a foundation for domestic intelligent computing centers, and serving the intelligent computing development of various industries.

Winner of the CFCF2024 Annual Optical Communication Product Innovation Award

On June 24, at the CFCF2024 awards ceremony, Sino-Telecom's "SR3000 series switch" won the "2024 Annual Product Innovation Award [Transmission Equipment and Subsystems Category]". This device has high integration, occupying less room space under the same system capacity; low power consumption per unit bandwidth, saving total power consumption; and strong openness, with device control interfaces supporting the Netconf protocol. It uses fully domestically produced chip designs and supports a programmable chip hardware architecture.

Sino-Telecom's SR3000 series switch features ultra-large transmission capacity, small size, low power consumption, convenient operation and maintenance, and domestically produced chip autonomy and control. It provides highly scalable, reliable, and secur e connections, and can be widely used in data centers, campus networks, and white-box applications.