Sun Turns to Lasers to Speed Up Computer Chips

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 24, 2008 @05:44AM from the friggin-lasers dept.

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."

3 of 130 comments (clear)

Great idea! by peipas · 2008-03-24 05:47 · Score: 5, Funny

I assume these systems will be water-cooled so the miniaturized sharks have somewhere to swim.
1. Re:Great idea! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-24 06:00 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  How do you feel about Sea Bass?
-1 : redundant by UdoKeir · 2008-03-24 05:50 · Score: 5, Funny

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!