IBM Optical Chip Moves Data At 1Tbps

snydeq writes "IBM researchers have developed a prototype optical chip that can transfer data at 1Tbps, the equivalent of downloading 500 high-definition movies, using light pulses, the company said Thursday. The chip, called Holey Optochip, is a parallel optical transceiver consisting of both a transmitter and a receiver, and is designed to handle the large amount of data created and transmitted over corporate and consumer networks as a result of new applications and services. It is expected to power future supercomputer and data center applications, an area where IBM already uses optical technology." User judgecorp links to more coverage, writing "The record was achieved because 24 holes in the chip allow direct access to lasers connected to the chip."

Comments

Holey Optochip Batman

[Anonymous Coward]

n/m

What kind of kick-ass compression?

[Splab]

1 terabit per second is 128 gigabyte per second - if they can fit 500 HD in 128 GB that compression is to me a much more important breakthrough...

Re:What kind of kick-ass compression?

[Tea-Bone of Brooklyn]

They don't actually say how long it would take. Maybe it's just as cool as downloading 500 HD movies or something. The statement is sort of like "It goes 50,000 MPH, the equivalent of flying to Mars."

Re:What kind of kick-ass compression?

[geekmux]

They don't actually say how long it would take. Maybe it's just as cool as downloading 500 HD movies or something. The statement is sort of like "It goes 50,000 MPH, the equivalent of flying to Mars."

Yeah, the only way it could possibly be worse is if we perhaps had "MPH", and "MPh", the latter indicating a speed 1/8th as fast, but no one would EVER pay attention to the "typo"...

Re:What kind of kick-ass compression?

[X0563511]

You know, the phrase actually makes sense with the context (that was never given in the movie)

quote:

The Kessel Run was an 18-parsec route used by smugglers to move glitterstim spice from Kessel to an area south of the Si'Klaata Cluster without getting caught by the Imperial ships that were guarding the movement of spice from Kessel's mines.

It took travelers in real space around The Maw leading them to an uninhabitable—but far easier to navigate—area of space called The Pit, which was an asteroid cluster encased in a nebula arm making sensors as well as pilots go virtually blind. Thus there was a high chance that pilots, weary from the long flight through real space, would crash into an asteroid.

So, the idea is that he took a rather large shortcut - "By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs."

Re:Uploads?

[masternerdguy]

10 years in jail I imagine. But think of how fast you could pirate things with the advances in technology when you get out!

640Gbps

[circletimessquare]

ought to be enough for anybody.

alignment

[phriedom]

How would you like to be the technician who had to align 24 photodiodes and 24 lasers to 48 optical fibers on a 5mm x 5mm die. They should have a picture of that heroic individual in the press release. But no, the PR people are just making up crap about transfer rates.

Re:alignment

[phriedom]

Having read the much, much better IBM press release, I see now that the arrays of TX and RX diodes are assembled to the mother chip while it is still in wafer, which would imply automation, and as you said alignment by lithography. Then there is this bit: "The Holey Optochips are designed for direct coupling to a standard 48-channel multimode fiber array through an efficient microlens optical system that can be assembled with conventional high-volume packaging tools." So again, automated, not manual. I simply had no idea there was such a thing as a standard 48-channel multimode fiber array, like they sell them at Frye's or something. In any case, IBM seems to be trying to make it clear that this isn't some esoteric lab experiment like I assumed it was, but uses existing technology that could be scaled into production. Now my question is: what did they use to feed data to 24 40-something Gigabit channels? I'm guessing they loopback the optical side, but that is just a guess, maybe they have 24 optical sources and loopback the electrical side. I wish they had a picture of the whole setup.

Re:Measuring in HD movies?

[MyLongNickName]

Pssst. 1/500 of 1Tb/s is 2Gb/s not 2Mb/s. I think they are saying you can download 500 movies in 1 second, not the equivilent of streaming continually at 1Tb/s. 1Tb/s just blows my mind.

Re:1 Tbps

[GameboyRMH]

As of March 2012 it's about 0.00037 LoCs/sec

Re:Measuring in HD movies?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Great news, they've gotten my porn collection transfer time metric down to three hours fourteen minutes, that's a new record.

here's the press release

[crgrace]

The linked article sucks. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/37095.wss

Re:Uploads?

[Sqr(twg)]

Yes, or simply 315 569 260 jails.