Author
Ken Hall, RCDD NTS
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AI Data Center Fiber Optic SolutionsThe conference was expected to draw 25,000 live attendees, plus as many as 300,000 more online, making it among the most heavily-trafficked events CommScope has participated in this year.
Several recurring themes emerged during the five-day show in San Jose, California. Among these were the rapidly increasing need for capacity, density, power and cooling solutions to meet the demand that expands with each new generation of AI technology.
Energy efficiency was also a key topic as AI data center server cabinets move towards a staggering 600 kW draw in response to escalating demand for modern AI applications. The surge in complex workloads supporting advanced reasoning models—and the rise of more autonomous agentic AI—are driving an unprecedented need for more computational power. For AI data centers, this requirement also comes with an urgent need for improved energy efficiency and more agility in infrastructure design.
CommScope’s solutions empower agility and scalability
Our booth demonstrations and presentation provided attendees (including key stakeholders, ecosystem partners, and global hyperscale, cloud and telco customers) with practical guidance for a range of priorities. They included improving energy efficiency and enabling rapid deployment, flexibility and redundancy for capacity migration.
Exhibitors at CommScope's GTC booth
The recent launch of the Propel XFrame™ solution was well received and generated significant excitement around the CommScope booth. Customers, partners and key decisionmakers were generally impressed by the manageability, density and flexibility of the solution, especially when paired with the innovative FiberGuide® overhead raceway system.
Cabinet layouts are based on the NVIDIA reference architecture models for each AI cluster. For systems designers, this offers value in that it enables off-site assembly of common building blocks for scaling data centers, delivering on-site production efficiencies. Combined with optimal designs found in CommScope’s Data Center Cabling Solutions for AI Networks guide, on-site deployment can be faster and more efficient.
Getting more AI performance for fewer watts
On the topic of energy efficiency, a recent announcement by NVIDIA regarding the potential of co-packaged optics (CPO) designs has ignited interest in the power efficiencies that CPOs provide compared to legacy transceiver combinations on the face of electronics. Removing the transceivers at each end of a cable and replacing them with passive MPO fiber connectors at the front of the network equipment in each channel—combined with some internal overhead reduction—can help reduce power use per port. Multiplied over the hundreds of thousands of ports in a typical AI data center, the combined energy savings can become quite significant.
When paired with advanced fiber-optic cabling such as CommScope’s ultra low-loss Propel™ solutions, NVIDIA’s just-launched photonic switch technology offers incredible potential to provide next-generation performance and substantial reductions in power consumption.
Ken Hall hosts CommScope's GTC presentation session
Our presence at NVIDIA GTC 2025 was a powerful demonstration of the role that CommScope plays in enabling data center transformation and deployment of AI factories across the globe. To learn more about CommScope’s solutions for NVIDIA AI factories, check out our featured resources here, where you can also find our comprehensive guide Data Center Cabling Solutions for NVIDIA AI Networks.
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