Chipzilla has come up with a new connector that uses light as a speedy way to shuffle data between computers. MXC optical cables will be first implemented at the rack level and use light and lasers to move data between servers, storage, networking and other computing resources and will retire copper cables, Intel thinks.

The cables will transfer data at speeds of up to 1.6Tbps (bits per second), outpacing the throughput on copper cables used for networking in data centres. The cables are based on Intel's silicon photonics technology, which combines optical networking with silicon components.

The cables are smaller, more durable and have a range of up to 300 meters Ethernet is slower per lane and signals could degrade on cables that are longer than tens of meters an intel spokesman said. Corning, which said it would start making cables for end customers in the third quarter, but has so far not mentioned price.

An MXC cable can have up to 64 fibers, with each fiber transferring data at 25Gbps. The fastest cable that can transfer data at 1.6Tbps will have 64 fibers. The pricing will depend on the number of fibers in a cable and the distance.