"Face-centered cubic" and "cubic close-packed" are two different names for the same structure. The face-centered cubic structure and the cubic close-packed structure are identical. This figure highlights two of the cubic close-packed planes in a face-centered cubic unit cell.

Two seemingly different descriptions of the same structure arise because the cubic close packed description is convenient for describing the packing of atoms, while the face-centered cubic description is convenient for describing distances and angles in a cubic geometry.