Chips with friggin' laser beams

[Invisusira]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/silico ... 10961.html

Basically, instead of computer components being linked by short-range lower-speed copper, Intel's got a new prototype 50Gbps laser link with a 15m range. There's videos at the bottom of the article.

[Snake-Aes]

I was kinda hoping for the multicolored one used for qBits. Back to laser-cooled sets then...

[hoho]

50Gbps

While the range is awesome GPUs have had >200Gbps for quite long time

It would be more awesome if they could get the latency down to zero (I can dream, can I?) so it could be used to efficiently attach a bunch of RAM to CPU/GPU to provide unlimited bandwidth. Currently the main limitation is that there simply isn't enough room to make all the wire connections with the chip.

[Snake-Aes]

Well, light buses are the obvious solution to bus speed for a while now. Can't go much faster than light in a low pressure environment. Fun new tricks of light include the darkness laser and the anti-light.

[Chicken]

For some reason my first thought upon seeing the thread title was actually "Shark an' Chips".

[Fivelives]

Where are the monkeys with lasers?

[hoho]

Where are the monkeys with lasers?

Sharks ate them and took the lasers

[Lightbeard]

Where are the raptors with lasers?

fixed

[theckhd]

This really is the future of chip design. Research on optical interconnects has been going on for years now. If my memory serves, the real limitation up until now was miniaturizing the lasers enough to make the whole thing feasible. Reducing the optical waveguide loss might also have been a hurdle, but if they've gotten it low enough that they can send signals 15m with acceptable BER's then I'd say they've cleared it.

[Fridmarr]

Where are the monkeys with lasers?

Sharks ate them and took the lasers

Then the sharks got hooked by futuristic members of the California Highway Patrol, with lasers of course.

[Kiorken]

YOU TEASING HOOKER

For some reason, I anticipated opening this, and expecting some kind of new delicious Dorito. Thanks. Just, thanks.

[Brekkie]

I expected potato chips.

I are disappoint.

[Invisusira]

[Thornir]

I don't see Utz's Crab Chiptm

[hoho]

This really is the future of chip design.

Pretty much, yea. You can pack a whole lot more information in a beam of light than into a wire and it will likely travel faster* too. Though I'm still wondering if the latency of the laser-based system is comparable to what we have atm between, say RAM <-> CPU.


*) Not sure what medium are they using for the laser but from what I remember the electric signals don't really travel at speed of light inside the wiring. EM field, yes, but not actual charge. I could be remembering some stuff wrong though, haven't been dealing with that stuff for past few years.