Hollow-Core Fiber Deployed Between AI Data Centers in Ningxia Cuts Latency 30%

China's next-generation hollow-core optical fiber has entered commercial use between intelligent computing centers in Zhongwei, Ningxia, on October 5, reducing transmission latency and loss by more than 30%.

Communications engineers made the first large-scale deployment of the fiber between data centers 30 kilometers apart in Zhongwei this month, addressing the ultra-high latency caused by distances of over a thousand kilometers to major computing demand hubs such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

The hollow-core fiber, less than 0.4 mm in diameter, embeds 20 miniature glass cylinders and replaces the traditional glass core with a near-vacuum air channel. This allows light signals to travel at up to 99.7% of the speed of light, well above the physical limit of roughly 69.5% for conventional solid-core fiber.

Compared with traditional fiber, the technology achieves a combination of ultra-low latency, ultra-low loss and ultra-high bandwidth, removing a major barrier to long-distance lossless transmission and supporting more efficient cross-regional computing networks.