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IBM Debuts Optical Transceiver Chipset
IBM debuted a new optical transceiver chipset today that researchers within the company promise will allow users to download data eight times faster than current technology. IBM cited the rising demand for digital media such as movies as the driving force behind the new technology. "IBM says it can meet that need, building its new chipset by making an optical transceiver with standard CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology, and combining that with optical components crafted from exotic materials such as indium phosphide and gallium arsenide. The resulting package is just 3.25mm by 5.25mm in size, small enough to be integrated onto a printed circuit board."
...and the Survey that 29% of US households dont see a need for an internet connection couldnt have been better timed. Anyone else find this slightly ironic?
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Probably for the same reason that your current one got modded down too... DARPA does not finance things for the fun of it - they get first refusal on any technologies developed. With the well-documented move of big corporations, and even universites, away from 'primary' research, it's good that the state (in whatever form) stil finances this sort of stuff. Most of the recent wealth in the USA was built on intellectual capital - we can't make most stuff cheaper than the Chinese. Everybody in the economy benefits from this greater wealth, albeit some more than others.
I actually read (quickly) TFA, and I don't see how this is useful at all for the applications they're envisioning. In a high-performance data center or supercomputer cluster, sure, 160 Gbps links might be quite useful. But for connecting homes to the internet? Sorry, I don't see it.
For one thing, this technology is far faster than anything we already have, or what anyone is demanding. Add up a fast internet connection, VoIP, and a few TV channels in HD, and you still don't come close to needing 160 Gbps. We already have optical networks developed for connecting homes to these services, and they're nearing deployment. Their name is PON, or passive optical network. This FA doesn't give any details of this 160 Gbps stuff, but can it travel 60 km without any amplification? That's basically a requirement for economically deploying fiber to peoples' homes. Just because a particular fiber-optic technology may be useful for some applications, like short point-to-point links, doesn't mean it's useful for extremely long-distance use as may be the case for residential use.
PON is already here and developed; it supports TV, voice, and data with a 2.4 Gbps downstream rate (1.2 up). What would we ever need 160 Gbps for within the next 20-30 years? Just how many Blu-Ray discs do you need to transfer at once?
I don't see how this is going to make my cable connection run any faster, which is the only part of downloading movies faster that would have any effect on me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No. The actual arguments based on greed, not bandwidth. Technical arguments against net neutrality are simply fodder for the common person to argue about. All decisions will be taken based upon degree of profit that appears to be available.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.