Sun to Connect Chips via Laser Beams

Sun to Connect Chips via Laser Beams

Techtree News Staff, Mar 28, 2008 1846 hrs IST

Sun is believed to have found a way to connect computer chips via laser beams instead of wires to make them communicate at much higher speeds.

According to a New York Times report, Sun Microsystems has announced receiving a $44-million contract from the Pentagon to explore the possibility of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams.

Indeed, Sun is believed to have found a way to connect computer chips via laser beams instead of wires so as to make them communicate at much higher speeds -- paving the way for the next wave of computers that are more compact, faster, and more energy-efficient. The technology that Sun has chanced upon is part of a Computer Science discipline called 'Silicon Photonics', and promises to do away with that most difficult obstacle facing today's computer designers; namely rapid movement of information to solve problems that require hundreds and thousands of processors. However, Sun's nouveau approach has much to do with its ability to very accurately align processors so as to allow transmission of light beams across their surfaces in ultra-narrow channels known as 'wave guides'. Effectively, each chip will be able to communicate with every other chip in the array through a laser beam that will carry tens billions of bits of data per second.

Researchers at Sun are calling their new system "macrochip", and though it's prone to a 50 percent failure rate -- reportedly by their own admission -- in the event it can be proved both technically feasible and commercially possible, Sun claims that would lead to the creation of much better machines that are about a thousand times faster than the computers of today.

Sun's partners on the project are Stanford and the University of California, San Diego, as also two 'Silicon Photonics' companies, Luxtera and Kotura. The five-year project is being financed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and builds on an earlier Sun project that was intended to interconnect chips electrically by stacking them edge-to-edge.



Write a comment

       (All fields are mandatory.)

Text Limit = 255 Characters

Type the characters you see in the picture below.

#

Characters are not case sensitive.

VIEW ALL LATEST

Stream Multimedia Content On iPhone In Real-Time

News > Software , November 20, 2008 1737 hrs IST

Watch live TV, read an e-book on the go ...

Nokia Readies TD-SCDMA Smartphone For China

News > Internet , November 20, 2008 1718 hrs IST

China Mobile to launch the 3G handset by 2009-end ...

LG Prada II Gets A Companion - Prada Link

News > Consumer Electronics , November 20, 2008 1706 hrs IST

Read text messages on a watch ...

MS Office Web Not Available Offline

News > Internet , November 20, 2008 1709 hrs IST

The browser-based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint not to have offline mode initially ...

SearchMe Brings Visual Search To iPhone

News > Internet , November 20, 2008 1601 hrs IST

Upstages Google's voice search offering ...

 

USER REVIEWS

MOST POPULAR NEWS

Hide
News

Could A DVR Save Your Marriage?

News | Consumer Electronics | 04 Sep 2008

...Or should you stick to your shrink?

News

Firefox Counters Chrome's Speed Test

News | Internet | 04 Sep 2008

According to Mozilla's SunSpider test, Firefox 3.1 is 28% faster than Chrome on ...

News

Nokia N96 for Rs. 40,000?

News | Telecom | 04 Sep 2008

False alarm everyone... We have learnt from Nokia that the N96 will be priced be...

MOST POPULAR REVIEWS

Hide

MOST POPULAR GAMES

Hide

MOST POPULAR DOWNLOADS

Hide
Downloads

Forbidden.exe

Downloads | Games | 02 Sep 2008

Downloads

md5deep

Downloads | System Tools | 04 Sep 2008

Downloads

RivaTuner

Downloads | System Tools | 03 Sep 2008

Close