Slashdot Mirror
Production of Photon Processors Expected in 2006
ThinSkin writes "Photon processors that transmit data via light, not electrons, are slated to enter production in mid-2006, ExtremeTech reports. Headed by a UCLA professor and a Nobel Prize winner, startup Luxtera claims that its optical modulator clocks in at 10-GHz, tens times that of Intel's optical modulator researchers talked about last year. Since the optical module exists as its own entity, it will require a standard CMOS processes to integrate the optical waveguides. Luxtera has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop this technology."
Actually, you're wrong--electrons are particles of mass. They travel in waves, just like electromagnetic radiation (that is, light), and have a distinct De Broglie wavelength, but they are not, themselves, electromagnetic radiation.
minus the omniture spyware tracking and massive banners
________
Startup Luxtera has announced its plans to enter the CMOS photonics market, anticipating the day when microprocessors will transmit information via light, not electrons.
The company claims that its optical modulator for transforming electrons into photons runs at 10-GHz, ten times the speed of an optical modulator Intel Corp. researchers began talking about last year. Beginning in mid-2006, Luxtera hopes to enter production of photonic devices using standard CMOS manufacturing processes. ADVERTISEMENT
Although the majority of chip-to-chip communications are conducted using copper-based interconnects, researchers are already looking toward the day when the balance shifts toward optical transmissions, initially for chip-to-chip interfaces between microprocessors, or between a microprocessor and memory device. Fibre optics are a standard component of modern telecommunication infrastructures, and interfaces such as Fibre Channel also use optical fibre interconnects to link up devices.
Although light slows down by some degree when transmitted through an optical medium, shifting to optical-based components is still too expensive than relying solely on copper, even when factoring in the additional power, heat, and crosstalk issues.
"The problem here that we can solve is a matter of bandwidth," said Gabriele Sartori, Luxtera's vice president of marketing and a former advocate for the HyperTransport protocol developed by Advanced Micro Devices.
Part of the relatively high cost of photonics comes from the fact that converting electrons to photons requires an intermediary device, such as the modulator Luxtera is designing. Today, that device exists as a separate module. Intel, Luxtera, and others are trying to integrate the optical waveguides within standard CMOS processes, that can be controlled by the standard voltage swings of a microprocessor.
However, doing so requires that the optical vendor have close ties to a microprocessor manufacturer. At Intel, that's no problem. Luxtera, on the other hand, has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop the technology. Finding a partner like Freescale is "necessary," Sartori said. "You must walk before you can run."
Freescale has taped out several engineering samples of the optical technology, including a chip, one side of which includes the optical interface built in. The sample chip use a 130-nm SOI process, the same technology used to fabricate the G4 microprocessor. Part of Luxtera's job has been to develop silicon libraries, the files used to design the photonic chips in the same way other libraries serve as the blueprint for making more conventional semiconductors.
The 32-employee startup originally received $7 million funding from Sevin Rosen Funds and August Capital in 2001, followed by an additional $15 million by New Enterprise Associates in 2003. Eli Yablonovitch, a professor at UCLA who developed photoelectronic crystals, sits on the company's board, while Arno Penzias, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on the Big Bang theory, serves in an advisory role. Other board members include Andy Rappaport of August Capital, which funded Transmeta, among others.
And who gets to use these?
Whoever can afford them.
Are these like only special coprocessors for million-dollar supercomputers?
No. These are not "processors" of any sort. It is a new way to modulate signal between CMOS and optical at high frequency and small scale. It may provide faster bus speeds, assuming the reality matches the funding hype.
Are they going to be x86-compatible? MIPS compatible? What?
It will be "compatible" with any CMOS device that needs a bus to communicate with some other device. Since that includes all useful CMOS devices, it will be compatible with everything!
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0411/068.html
Interestingly, the 10Ghz figure comes from a measurement made a researcher at Sun Labs, who have been working with Luxtera for more than a year now. The article also talks about what other companies such as Intel and IBM are up to.
Just thought I'd clear up that potential confusion...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Actually this is less dissappointing that I originally thought --
A major problem as CMOS processes get smaller and smaller is wires and wiring. Its really bad at 90nm and it looks like its going to be way worse at 65nm.
Even if optical interconnects can just be used for long intra-unit busses (think L1 cache to fetch/decode unit, and there to integer unit and float unit, etc) we could see great performance gains.
Something like when the upper metal layers in CMOS went to copper a few years ago.
Other groups working on optical interconnects: (incomplete list)
Heriot Watt
Cornell University
IBM Zurich
Delft
UIUC
Intel
Stanford
If you read the article carefully (which is laced with marketing hype and was obviously written by someone only passingly familiar with the technologies involved), you will see that nobody's promising optical cpu's in 2006. In anticipation of future optical chips and other technologies, Intel has begun developing one of the stepping stones toward this technological era, which is an optical/electrical gateway of sorts which can be built on a standard electrical chip to allow it to interface with optical components. Think a modern cpu, with some low level optical/eletrical interface on the edge of it so that a row of optical "pins" can stick out one side in addition to the normal electrical pins on the bottom.
This little startup company is working on the same thing, and hopes to have it out soon. Their marketing article is trying to build hype so they can get more cash. Nobody will be selling anyone an all-optical cpu in 2006 (or 2007, or 2008, etc).
11*43+456^2
It may take a few nanoseconds for the light to bounce around, but that light can be modulated at extremely high rates (that electrical wires cannot). Managing latency is a well understood problem, generally solved by using speculation, buffering, etc..
The fact is, if these parts are running at 10ghz, you will have 10ghz connections between connected parts (with a few nanoseconds of latency, which is mostly irrelevant).
Bandwidth is a measure of frequency and number of communication channels. This advancement does indeed provide more bandwidth, mostly because it can be clocked higher. All computer configurations could see substantial benefits because current electrical designs have highly limited bus speeds (it is not signal propagation that matters, but signal modulation speed "frequency").
Again, signal propagation speed is mostly irrelevant. Signal modulation speed is what is important. Latency != Frequency.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator