Researchers Have Developed a Photonic Based Chipset Breakthrough

[dgstorm]

The next generation of computer technology has officially been born. The combined efforts of researchers at University of Colorado Boulder, University of California, Berkeley, and MIT have had a breakthrough in modern computer chipset technology. They have developed a working chipset that is primarily based upon photonics instead of electronics.

To distill that down, their new chipset uses light rays to transmit data instead of electricity. The advantage of using photons instead of electrons is that you can move larger amounts of data more quickly while using far less power at the same time. Here's a quote with more of the details,

The new chip uses photonics and sends information inside the chip as light rather than electricity and significantly reduces the energy needed to make data transfers. Light can be sent across longer distances than electricity using the same amount of power. With a light-based chip, multiple data streams can be sent over the same medium with data encoded in different light colors.

The light-based chip uses infrared light and the light can be densely packed on a chip to enable huge total bandwidths. The chip has a bandwidth density of 300 gigabits per second per square millimeter, about 10 to 50 times higher than electric only microprocessors. The processor created measures 3mm x 6mm and incorporates both traditional electronic circuitry and 850 optical I/O components to make the first integrated single chip design of its type.

Obviously, this breakthrough is still years away from an actual working consumer product, but it's always exciting to see what intriguing new ways that creative engineers can figure out how to break reality!

Source: SlashGear

 

[kodiak799]

Could be the tech that makes phones become true pocket pc's, because that huge reduction in power means a lot less heat generated, as well.

Get wireless/bluetooth tech up to par and we'll just be buying dummy laptops and tablets with the phone doing all the work.

And then the entire pricing model is turned on its head. ORRRRRRR the carriers will block us from using that feature without paying thru the nose.

 

[Miller6386]

I'm curious as to what kind of price tag they will come with.

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[liftedplane]

I'm curious as to what kind of price tag they will come with.

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at first an astronomical one, after the corporations have artificially kept the prices inflated they'll drop it.

 

[kodiak799]

this tech is hit-and-miss as too how long it takes to come to market...sometimes it happens surprisingly fast, sometimes it remains perma-vaporware.

combine this, also, with development in ram that can remember data just like memory storage and we will have massive capabilities = superfast cpu, virtually no heat, and 256GB+ of ram that doubles as storage.

just look at how far mobile has come in less than 10 years, or even computing in general over the past 15-20 and think where we can be in another 10-20 years.

 

[liftedplane]

Equipment like this would also help extend our woefully inadequate battery tech.

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[kodiak799]

at first an astronomical one, after the corporations have artificially kept the prices inflated they'll drop it.

We'll also have to wait a few extra years for the tech to come to phones while manufacturers decide how to trickle out the tech to bleed us for upgrades. Gen 1 will be inexplicably slow and underpowered, Gen 2 will lack sufficient ram, and Gen 3 could be obsolete with the launch of 5G.

 

[RyanPm40]

Anybody know if this utilized the new LiFi tech?

 

[cr6]

Anybody know if this utilized the new LiFi tech?

Was going to mention this last night.
It won't be long until we're all using Minority Report type pc's and smartphones.
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