Fiber On Your Motherboard...Soon!

km790816 writes: "In this post I joked about wanting an optical bus on my PC. In the last week I've seen two articles from The Register and EETimes discussing the real possibility. Both mention high bandwidth and lower heat and power usage. Sounds good to me."

Comments

Better than fiber in it, I guess.

[dave-fu]

But I was looking forward to buying my next mobo from Metamucil.
Curses! Foiled again!

fiber vs copper

[headwick]

Does that mean magic light instead of magic smoke will come out of the board when it gets fried?

Add fibre to your PC

[sharkey]

The TV-only Limited Offer of Tomorrow:

"Our New, Improved Motherboards have Fibre Added!! This will loosen your pipes, and help Windows shit itself faster and easier! Be the first on your block to own one!"

Re:Question

[sharkey]

Kind of like the "Visible Computer" from the Knowledgeum on the Simpson's?

Frink: The section now illuminated is the floating point unit. One of my personal favorite units.
Bart: How do you get this thing to play Blackjack?
Frink: Stop that, you're hurting it.
Bart: So how is it supposed to work?
Frink: Well...
Bart: Boring. Am I on the Internet?
Frink: No, you can only access the...
Bart: Boring! What's that fire for?
Nerd: The hard drive is crashing at an alarming speed!
Frink: No more pictures!

Hey, that sounds odd.

[AnonymousCowheard]

Fiber is good for communications because the lines themselves aren't affected by Pulse Energy Weapons, and the occasional air-burst nuclear bomb, but I see no advantage of using Fiber optics as a system bus. Joke: According to einstein's theory of relativity, a Fiber Optic (Computer)Bus traveling on a train, moving at 50 Miles/per hour will be surprisingly slow at only 50 Miles/per hour /Joke. There will always be transponders for fiber optic communications, but does that mean ever Integrate Circuit on a motherboard will need a transpoder/repeater for every Fiber Optic IO connection? If so, that means the Fiber Optic IO Lines will be no faster than standard Electron(ic) Integrated Circuits. Think of it, if Electron are slower than Protons, then Electrons will be the bottleneck of sending pulses of light. We are stuck again with Electrons. And if an EMP blast were to happen, which my UFO-computer will be safe some, everyone else's Computers will be fried and they fiber optics will still work like a charm, but with no computing value.

Re:Optical on the motherboard..

[sharkey]

God, can you imagine a self-aware Windows PC?

"Those look like comfortable VBS"
"Life is like a Microsoft EULA. You never know what your gonna get."
"I don't know much about metadata, but I think every file needs a proper extension."

Re:speed up HD's

[Green Light]

...crystal storage. Transfer speeds 1000 time normal blah blah blah...

Well, that's fascinating; do you have any links that talk about specific "crystal storage" technology, or did you get this information from "Superman: The Movie" 8^)

Seriously, I'd like to find a way to store all of the world's information in a few crystal cubes in my pocket. Just the geek factor alone is enough to get me excited. I could solve any argument, for instance, by hooking the relevant cube up to my Palm and scratching out the appropriate question on the screen. I think that's a "reasonable demand"...

Optical buses

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah here in Manchester, UK, we have optical buses - you wait for flippin' ages for them to come along, but they never do. The company says they run on time, so my best guess is they're invisible...

Re:speed up HD's

[Anonymous Coward]

> Personally, I'm looking forward to crystal storage.

Keep on looking. In the mean time I am willing to bet $100 that in year 2010

1. Along with optical disks, hard drives will be the dominant storage medium.
2. A small startup makes a press release about a revolution in the field holographic storage research, with commercial applications 5 years away.

Re:Fibre on-board

[Unknown Bovine Group]

A high-fiber motherboard has been linked to decreased risk of colon cancer. Aren't you willing to pay a little more for that kind of peace of mind?

fiber on motherboard

[NaturePhotog]

I already have fiber on my motherboard. Well, OK, technically it's cat fur sucked in through the vents, but that's got a lot of fiber. And it uses absolutely *no* power. The heat retention is a problem, though.

Re:I wonder

[Chundra]

Someone, quick, moderate this either:

+1 Enteresting or
+1 Enformative

;-)

Re:Optical on the motherboard..

[mskfisher]

Well put. It's like saying "if we add enough horsepower to that car, it'll turn into plutonium!"

Computers are not inherently self-aware...
making them more of what they are won't change them into something else.