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."

Comments

This intention to reseach the use of lasers

[Timesprout]

has been hailed as a positive step by leading members of the shark community.