Next-generation DCI Solution

As the global digitalisation process continues to advance, interconnection traffic between data centres is growing at an average annual rate of about 30% (refer to IDC and other organisations' forecasts), and emerging applications such as AI training, real-time analytics, and cloud natives are driving the demand for east-west bandwidth to continue to rise. At the same time, DC architecture presents two major evolutionary trends:

• Edge expansion: core data centres are gradually distributed to edge nodes, leading to a rapid rise in demand for DCI in metropolitan areas;

• Cross-domain collaboration: the demand for disaster recovery and resource sharing between data centres has increased, and long-distance DCI architectures are facing higher-performance requirements.

In this context, traditional OTN solutions are difficult to meet the demands of new DCI scenarios due to deployment complexity, limited expansion, low energy efficiency and other issues.

• Large size, restricted deployment: centralised electrical cross-design equipment usually requires multiple racks, making it difficult to adapt to the space, power and thermal constraints of IDC environments;

• Insufficient flexibility: the optical layer is highly coupled with the service layer, with fixed wavelengths and rates, and weak capacity expansion and adaptation capabilities;

• High energy consumption: traditional 400G coherent modules consume more than 12W, and the long-term operation of the whole machine puts significant OPEX pressure;

• Closed ecosystems: Some systems use proprietary hardware and private protocols, limiting third-party compatibility and rapid deployment.

Designed on the principles of openness, high density, and energy efficiency, Sintai's OTNS8600-DCI series breaks through traditional bottlenecks in terms of architecture, power consumption, scalability, and interoperability, helping customers to build flexible and efficient next-generation data centre interconnection networks.

1. High-speed transmission, flexible adaptation to a variety of DCI scenarios

• Single-fibre 32×800G: adopting PM-16QAM modulation and C-band expansion, single-fibre capacity can reach 25.6T;

• Multiple modulation compatibility: supports 800G PM-16QAM (over 600km) and 400G QPSK (up to 2000km) to meet the needs of metro/long-distance scenarios;

• Intelligent rate matching: supports 100G~800G rate selection on demand, improving network adaptability.

2. Compact architecture design to optimise deployment and expansion efficiency

• High-density design: 1U/2U box-type device, single machine weight <20kg, suitable for high-density IDC rapid deployment;

• On-demand expansion: adopting distributed architecture, supporting modular card insertion and flexible capacity expansion, reducing the threshold of initial investment;

• Green and energy-saving: adopting silicon optical chip, the typical power consumption of 800G module is controlled within 30W, and the power consumption of the whole machine is about 40% lower than that of traditional solutions.

3. Open interface design, easy to dock SDN and multi-vendor systems

• Multi-vendor compatibility: Optical layer equipment supports Sintai and third-party systems for mixed networking, reducing replacement costs;

• Standardised interfaces: support for NETCONF/YANG southbound protocol, easy to dock existing SDN controllers;

• Flexible spectrum shaping: adjust spectrum resource allocation according to link conditions to achieve capacity/distance dynamic optimisation.

4. Typical applications and customer value

Sintai will continue to promote the innovation and upgrading of DCI products to build a future-oriented, open, efficient and green optical network interconnection platform for customers.