Optical fibre communication is the backbone of the internet. As essential core technologies are approaching their limits of size, speed and energy-efficiency, there is a need for new technologies that offer further scaling of data transmission capacity. Here we show that a single optical frequency-comb source based on a silicon nitride ring resonator supports data capacities in the petabit-per-second regime. We experimentally demonstrate transmission of 1.84 Pbit s^–1 over a 37-core, 7.9-km-long fibre using 223 wavelength channels derived from a single microcomb ring resonator producing a stabilized dark-pulse Kerr frequency comb. We also present a theoretical analysis that indicates that a single, chip-scale light source should be able to support 100 Pbit s^–1 in massively parallel space-and-wavelength multiplexed data transmission systems. Our findings could mark a shift in the design of future communication systems, targeting device-efficient transmitters and receivers.

光纤通信是互联网的支柱。随着基本核心技术的尺寸、速度和能效接近极限，需要能够进一步扩展数据传输容量的新技术。在这里，我们展示了基于氮化硅环形谐振器的单个光学频率梳源支持每秒 PB 级的数据容量。我们通过实验证明了 1.84 Pbit s ^–1在 37 芯、7.9 公里长的光纤上的传输，使用来自单个微梳环形谐振器的 223 个波长通道，产生稳定的暗脉冲克尔频率梳。我们还提出了一个理论分析，表明单个芯片级光源应该能够支持 100 Pbit s ^–1在大规模并行空间和波长多路复用数据传输系统中。我们的发现可能标志着未来通信系统设计的转变，目标是设备高效的发射器和接收器。