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Intel gets optical with fibre
Intel's Components Research Lab is working on ways to replace copper wiring between motherboards and chips inside computers with faster, more energy-efficient optical fibre.
[blockquote]The lab has created a prototype system with chips connected to each other through eight optical channels transferring data at more than 1 gigabit of data per second for an aggregate bandwidth of over 8Gbps (gigabits per second). The individual channels, called waveguides, can transfer data at up to 3Gbps.
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[link=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020354,39147918,00.htm]Read more[/link]
[blockquote]The lab has created a prototype system with chips connected to each other through eight optical channels transferring data at more than 1 gigabit of data per second for an aggregate bandwidth of over 8Gbps (gigabits per second). The individual channels, called waveguides, can transfer data at up to 3Gbps.
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[link=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020354,39147918,00.htm]Read more[/link]
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my motherboard would be operating on LIGHT
-drasnor
Technology is great
That is to say, they haven't been able to make a single diode capable of solid-state white lighting.
To suggest that they can make an LED within 3 years (That's my minimum estimate) that changes states one time every billionth of a second is an unlikely suggestion.
With LEDs, true, with LASERS, not true(An AT&T subsidiary was researching laser and mirror I\O bus at very fast switching cycles over a decade ago). For I\O access to CACHE, not true-- cache does not run at core (ALU\FPU) speeds, it is slower. Fiber channel HDs exist now. Thy are 15K RPM HDs, they do not use lasers, throughput would amaze you.
Second, what is the loss on close to nanowire sized optically conductive fibers??? Tiny, and the light quantums needed are tiny because loss is tiny. Use the smallest pipe, make it mirror reflective in fiber strand coating, and you can pump data though a very long pipe at GHz speeds serially. Try 10 Gigabits/sec or much more. That is how Gigabit networks work, and Terrabits for big enterprise are being guessed at by 8 years from now. We are not talking normal indicative LEDs here, we are talking LED material focals with Laser switching tech.
The newer projectors use an optical GPU, mirrors with bright LEDs and laser switching tech. Browse MITs public web-accessible areas sometime, ok??? Please???
BTW, just to blow some minds, flexible silicon nanowires (project at UC-Berkeley is led by Piedong Yang, who is specializing in nanowire pioneering) are being made now in research labs, they have been made as small as 5 nanometers in size that are up to hundreds of millimeters long. This I discovered looking at th February 2004 issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine, which I subscribe to. Think tiny, low-wattage (very low wattage) LEDS that are very precisely switched. Small pipes, flexible, with coatings that reflectively tunnel signal around curves. 3-4 years is doable for at least I\O to cache and to bridges, not possibly an all optical CPU at 3 GHz, but close.
Look at STMicroelectronics in Gneva, Switzerland, which expects to have customers start testing in next year, which has an all-silicon optical pipe chip now (PARTS ARE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS PLUS SILICON BLEND, no conductive metal traces or wires of small size in chip), for example. That project by this company is led by Physicist Salvatore Coffa.
John D.
This is kinda what shorty's day job company does for a living... He'll be able to pipe in some actual real-world experience, I'm sure.