The quiet infrastructure shift powering the next generation of data centers
Updated
January 30, 2026 11:42 AM
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) port on a motherboard, coloured yellow. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Modern data centers operate on a simple yet fundamental principle: computers require the ability to share data extremely quickly. As AI and cloud systems grow, servers are no longer confined to a single rack. They are spread across many racks, sometimes across entire rooms. When that happens, moving data quickly and cleanly becomes harder.
Montage Technology, a Shanghai-based semiconductor company, builds the chips and connection systems that help servers exchange data without delays. This week, the company announced a new Active Electrical Cable (AEC) solution based on PCIe 6.x and CXL 3.x — two important standards used to connect CPUs, GPUs, network cards and storage inside modern data centers.
In simple terms, Montage’s new AEC product helps different parts of a data center “talk” to each other faster and more reliably, even when those parts are physically far apart.
As data centers grow to support AI and cloud workloads, their architecture is changing. Instead of everything sitting inside one rack, systems now stretch across multiple racks and even multiple rows. This creates a new problem: the longer the distance between machines, the harder it is to keep data signals clean and fast.
This is where Active Electrical Cables come in. Unlike regular copper cables, AECs include small electronic components inside the cable itself. These components strengthen and clean up the data signal as it travels, so information can move farther without getting distorted or delayed.
Montage’s solution uses its own retimer chip based on PCIe 6.x and CXL 3.x. A “retimer” refreshes the data signal so it arrives accurately at the other end. This allows servers, GPUs, storage devices and network cards to stay tightly connected even across longer distances inside large data centers.
The company also uses high-density cable designs and built-in monitoring tools so operators can track performance and fix issues faster. That makes large data centers easier to deploy and maintain.
According to Montage, the solution has already passed interoperability tests with CPUs, xPUs, PCIe switches and network cards. It has also been jointly developed with cable manufacturers in China and validated at the system level.
What makes this development important is not just speed. It is about scale. AI models, cloud services and real-time applications demand massive amounts of data to move continuously between machines. If that movement slows down, everything else slows with it.
By improving how machines connect across racks, Montage’s AEC solution supports the kind of infrastructure that next-generation AI and cloud systems depend on.
Looking ahead, the company plans to expand its high-speed interconnect products further, including work on PCIe 7.0 and Ethernet retimer technologies.
Quietly, in the background of every AI system and cloud service, there is a network of cables and chips doing the hard work of moving data. Montage’s latest launch focuses on making that hidden layer faster, cleaner and ready for the scale that modern computing now demands.
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How Korea is trying to take control of its AI future.
Updated
January 13, 2026 10:56 AM
SK Telecom Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator, has unveiled A.X K1, a hyperscale artificial intelligence model with 519 billion parameters. The model sits at the center of a government-backed effort to build advanced AI systems and domestic AI infrastructure within Korea. This comes at a time when companies in the United States and China largely dominate the development of the most powerful large language models.
Rather than framing A.X K1 as just another large language model, SK Telecom is positioning it as part of a broader push to build sovereign AI capacity from the ground up. The model is being developed as part of the Korean government’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model project, which aims to ensure that core AI systems are built, trained and operated within the country. In simple terms, the initiative focuses on reducing reliance on foreign AI platforms and cloud-based AI infrastructure, while giving Korea more control over how artificial intelligence is developed and deployed at scale.
One of the gaps this approach is trying to address is how AI knowledge flows across a national ecosystem. Today, the most powerful AI foundation models are often closed, expensive and concentrated within a small number of global technology companies. A.X K1 is designed to function as a “teacher model,” meaning it can transfer its capabilities to smaller, more specialized AI systems. This allows developers, enterprises and public institutions to build tailored AI tools without starting from scratch or depending entirely on overseas AI providers.
That distinction matters because most real-world applications of artificial intelligence do not require massive models operating independently. They require focused, reliable AI systems designed for specific use cases such as customer service, enterprise search, manufacturing automation or mobility. By anchoring those systems to a large, domestically developed foundation model, SK Telecom and its partners are aiming to create a more resilient and self-sustaining AI ecosystem.
The effort also reflects a shift in how AI is being positioned for everyday use. SK Telecom plans to connect A.X K1 to services that already reach millions of users, including its AI assistant platform A., which operates across phone calls, messaging, web services and mobile applications. The broader goal is to make advanced AI feel less like a distant research asset and more like an embedded digital infrastructure that supports daily interactions.
This approach extends beyond consumer-facing services. Members of the SKT consortium are testing how the hyperscale AI model can support industrial and enterprise applications, including manufacturing systems, game development, robotics and autonomous technologies. The underlying logic is that national competitiveness in artificial intelligence now depends not only on model performance, but on whether those models can be deployed, adapted and validated in real-world environments.
There is also a hardware dimension to the project. Operating an AI model at the 500-billion-parameter scale places heavy demands on computing infrastructure, particularly memory performance and communication between processors. A.X K1 is being used to test and validate Korea’s semiconductor and AI chip capabilities under real workloads, linking large-scale AI software development directly to domestic semiconductor innovation.
The initiative brings together technology companies, universities and research institutions, including Krafton, KAIST and Seoul National University. Each contributes specialized expertise ranging from data validation and multimodal AI research to system scalability. More than 20 institutions have already expressed interest in testing and deploying the model, reinforcing the idea that A.X K1 is being treated as shared national AI infrastructure rather than a closed commercial product.
Looking ahead, SK Telecom plans to release A.X K1 as open-source AI software, alongside APIs and portions of the training data. If fully implemented, the move could lower barriers for developers, startups and researchers across Korea’s AI ecosystem, enabling them to build on top of a large-scale foundation model without incurring the cost and complexity of developing one independently.