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Sun Turns to Lasers to Speed Up Computer Chips
alphadogg writes to mention that Sun is attempting to move from the typical design of multiple small chips back to a unified single-wafer design. "The company is announcing today a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to explore replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams. The technology, part of a field of computer science known as silicon photonics, would eradicate the most daunting bottleneck facing today's supercomputer designers: moving information rapidly to solve problems that require hundreds or thousands of processors."
I assume these systems will be water-cooled so the miniaturized sharks have somewhere to swim.
To quote Scott McNealy:
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have SPARCS with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Do not look at chip with remaining good eye.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
To get you started, here's a search for you. It looks like IBM is only promising a 100-fold performance increase, but Sun got the contract (despite the possibly inaccurate story, it doesn't sound like they actually figured out anything thus far, besides "how to get some government loot") by promising a 1000x increase.
Hey DARPA — I'll give you a 1,000,000x improvement! Email and I'll tell you where to send the cash.
Don't worry, someone will ask it a question that is a paradox before then, and the whole thing will destroy itself with sparks and slowed audio.