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Sun Turns to Lasers to Speed Up Computer Chips

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on 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."

2 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. A really high bridge by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 5, Informative

    On chip they are pumping the signal over a traces with mm range lengths and um range widths, off chip it's over traces with dm range lengths and mm range widths. Timing and power consumption are hard enough problems on chip, off chip they become much harder ... not to mention that most of the power consumed either goes into EM or gets coupled into other signals.

    Serial connections help with the timing, but do diddly for power and noise. That's where optical comes in.

  2. Re:Are actuators faster than direct connections? by bartosek · · Score: 5, Informative

    In fact electrons in your typical electrical wire don't move anywhere near the speed of light.

    http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/speed.html