new Silicon Photonics tech

[VirusType2]

A new research breakthrough from Intel combines silicon chips and lasers to transmit data at 50 gigabits per second — and someday, maybe as fast as a terabit per second.

The 50-Gbps speed is enough to download an HD movie from iTunes, or up to 100 hours of digital music, in less than a second.

The technology, known as silicon photonics, can be used as a replacement for copper wires to connect components within computers, or between computers in data centers.

“The fundamental issue is that electronic signaling relying on copper wires is reaching its physical limits,” says Justin Rattner, chief technology officer for Intel, which announced the breakthrough Tuesday. “Photonics gives us the ability to move vast quantities of data across the room or planet at extremely high speeds and in a cost-effective manner.”

Photonics refers to the generation, modulation, switching and transmission of light, and can be done using lasers or light-emitting diodes.

"We have a good sense of the challenges here and what it takes to put all the components together, so we expect the technology to be widely deployed by the middle of the decade"

“If we are talking about CPU-to-memory connection, we would take our photonics chip and put it close to the CPU to bypass the copper interconnects,” says Paniccia. “For now we are not talking about integrating with the CPU.”


Imagine a TB per second data transfer. Basically, the only limitation seems to be the speed of light. Kind of interesting to think that computing could soon get to a point where it's [possibly] not possible to go any faster. But well, it shouldn't need to, at 299,792,458 m/s.

For now, the CPU will still be copper circuits, but the transfer between CPU and memory would be as fast as we know to be possible, for example.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/silicon-photonics-50-gbps/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/27/integrated_silicon_photonics/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/202018/intel_turns_to_light_to_transfer_data_inside_pcs.html

Download the White Paper: http://download.intel.com/pressroom...itePaper.pdf?iid=pr_smrelease_vPro_materials2

 

[No Limit]

Switching/routing all those packets will be the huge bottleneck. But yeah, would be cool if one day physics actually prevented networking from getting any faster.

 

[Colonel Kernel]

But yeah, would be cool if one day physics actually prevented networking from getting any faster.

But it won't be very good news, I suppose.

 

[Druckles]

I laugh at the hyperbole. Transmitting data across a chip is completely different from transmitting it over a wide area.

It's implying that we don't already have speed-of-light communication.

 

[Warped]

dammit I was gunna post this last night but didn't have the motivation!

anyway this is really cool tech and it seems clean and cheaper than alternatives

 

[VirusType2]

Transmitting data across a chip is completely different from transmitting it over a wide area.

What do you mean; that's the point.

It's implying that we don't already have speed-of-light communication.

No, it isn't. They compared it to fiber optic. This is supposed to be much cheaper, and to replace copper circuit boards.

 

[Druckles]

What do you mean; that's the point.

I mean that the sentence "The 50-Gbps speed is enough to download an HD movie from iTunes, or up to 100 hours of digital music, in less than a second" implies that the technology would replace fibre optic cables. It insinuates that the it would be used to enhance communication over a wide area network.

 

[No Limit]

Unless I'm missing something this uses fiber optic for transmission, not replaces or competes with it.

 

[VirusType2]

I'm not really sure, but I came to the same conclusion as No Limit. This will compliment fiber optic, and probably uses it when transferring data between circuit boards (that's what that 'wire' is in the image)

This is tasked to circuit boards, as opposed to fiber optic, which is used to transfer data between components and distances (for example, from your sound card to your stereo system)

"The 50-Gbps speed is enough to download an HD movie from iTunes, or up to 100 hours of digital music, in less than a second"

That's just giving you an idea of the speed. This won't be used like that. Fiber optic will, but you know as they say, "only as fast as the weakest link.", that's why they will compliment each other.

Finally, the limitation will be if they can design CPUs like this. I guess will need some LED or Laser "nano-sized" breakthroughs.

 

[Druckles]

Unless I'm missing something this uses fiber optic for transmission, not replaces or competes with it.

If this is what I think it is, then it doesn't use fibre optic, but still wouldn't replace or compete with it. It's for a completely different form of transmission. I.e. transmitting the data over short regions, where (relatively) long copper wires could bottleneck the speed.

Something to do with decreasing the size of the chip making longer wires suffer more. I can't remember the physics anymore.

That's just giving you an idea of the speed. This won't be used like that. Fiber optic will, but you know as they say, "only as fast as the weakest link."

Taking your average reader, it's not hard to make a wrong assumption. My only issue is that it's a silly analogy. Saying something like "it'll make your computer uber-fast!" would have been fine.

 

[No Limit]

The way I see it is instead of standard silicon to create 1s and 0s silicon lasers are used. But in the end the transmission is still done using fiber optic. I'm not aware of any other transmission method over long ranges that uses light and is not fiber optic.

What currently limits the speed of fiber optics is the receivers/transmitters. This speeds that up greatly.

 

[VirusType2]

The way I see it is instead of standard silicon to create 1s and 0s silicon lasers are used. But in the end the transmission is still done using fiber optic. I'm not aware of any other transmission method over long ranges that uses light and is not fiber optic.

What currently limits the speed of fiber optics is the receivers/transmitters. This speeds that up greatly.

This is what I was thinking. Pretty well supported if you just take a look at the last image. (101110110101..)

Didn't really study it well at first, but this pretty much confirms: