CONFIRMED by Credo’s press release of 12 October 2026. “Industry’s first”, the power saving and the weight figure are COMPANY CLAIMS, compared with active electrical cables (AECs), the copper cables that are Credo’s flagship product. TSN has not tested them.
Credo has shared details of its 1.6T ZeroFlap Active Light Cable (ALC), which it calls “the industry’s first row-scale, wide-parallel optical interconnect solution built for AI scale-out and front-end networks” [1]. The company says it “will be shipping in 2027” [1].
What it is
The cable links equipment across a row of racks in an AI data centre using light rather than copper. Instead of pushing a few optical channels to very high speeds, it uses many small light emitters working in parallel [1]. Credo says the cable “splits 200G lanes into many low-rate optical channels using simple NRZ modulation”, which avoids complex signal processing [1]. NRZ is a simple on/off way of sending bits.
Spare channels are built in, so if one fails the link can keep running, Credo says [1].
Key figures (company targets)
- Power: designed to draw 12W per cable-end, in a pluggable form [1]
- Reach: up to 50m [1]
- Reliability: target of 100 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) [1]
- Versus AECs: roughly 30% less power and 10x lighter, Credo says [1]
What Credo says
“For decades, optical transceivers have prioritized data rate per fiber. Our 1.6T ZeroFlap ALCs are engineered with reliability as the first-order concern,” said L.K. Bhupathi, Associate Vice President of Product at Credo. “The scale-up and scale-out links that form the densest connections in AI data centers demand higher reliability than traditional optics were designed to provide. Credo’s ALCs bring copper-class reliability to these links, enabling larger GPU clusters and higher-throughput connectivity for massive-scale AI deployments.” [1]
Credo will show the design at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit in San Jose this week [1]. No price was given.
Sources
- Credo Technology Group, “Credo Unveils 1.6T ZeroFlap Active Light Cable, Industry’s First Row-Scale, Wide-Parallel Optical Interconnect for AI Data Centers”, Business Wire, 12 October 2026. https://investors.credosemi.com/news-events/news/news-details/2026/Credo-Unveils-1-6T-ZeroFlap-Active-Light-Cable-Industrys-First-Row-Scale-Wide-Parallel-Optical-Interconnect-for-AI-Data-Centers/default.aspx
