Drilling Holes In A Microchip Increases Speed
IBM is a company known for its research into impossible technologies, which its scientists somehow make possible. They may have just done it again, by creating a microchip that can transfer information at the speed of nearly one terabit per second. IBM’s experimental microchip runs at eight times the speed of other chips.
The optical processing chip uses pulses of light that pass through 48 tiny holes in order to send and receive the data. Half of those holes send information, while the other half receives data back from other chips. Each of these holes can process up to 20 gigabits per second, which forms the total of 960 gigabits per second, just under the terabit mark. The creators of this optical chip, which they dubbed the Holey Optochip, made it to communicate with many other chips in a series rather than to stand alone. In this manner, the Hole Optochip will be able to increase the speeds of supercomputers and large servers.
The Holey Optochip is not only fast and powerful, but it is also energy efficient. The entire chip only uses 4.7 watts of power. That number is under the 5-watt goal that IBM uses for its green computing initiatives. This chip is the whole package – fast, powerful, and efficient – and that is very hard to achieve in technology.
By drilling holes through the chip to achieve greater speeds, IBM has more than just an experimental success. The drilling technique allows for mass production because IBM was able to create the Holey Optochip using manufacturing techniques that are already standard practice throughout the industry. IBM presented their findings at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference in Los Angeles on March 8, but is not planning to manufacture the chip. IBM developed the Holey Optochip, but will leave it to another company to mass produce it. IBM allows other companies to produce the chip and then uses those chips in its highly reliable products.
The Holey Optochip will not be available even to supercomputers and large servers for some time, as IBM has only just presented the technology. When a company is contracted to mass produce these chips, however, they will significantly improve servers. In the future, individuals can look forward to the day when the Holey Optochip, or its successors, will arrive in our home PCs and mobile computing devices. If data and files continue growing at the rate at which they currently are, it will not be too long before our devices absolutely require the speed and efficiency this optical microchip provides.
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