IBM Milestone Demonstrates Optical Device to Advance Computer Performance
IBM today announced its researchers have built a device capable of delaying the flow of light on a silicon chip, a requirement to one day allow computers to use optical communications to achieve better performance.
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“Today’s more powerful microprocessors are capable of performing much more work if we can only find a way to increase the flow of information within a computer,” said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president of Science and Technology for IBM Research. “As more and more data is capable of being processed on a chip, we believe optical communications is the way to eliminate these bottlenecks. As a result, the focus in high-performance computing is shifting from improvements in computation to those in communication within the system.”
Additional information on silicon nanophotonics
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
“While other researchers have dragged light to slower speeds than the Rochester scientists, who got it down to one-three-hundredth of its normal velocity, the new method is far simpler…”
January 27th, 2007 at 9:05 am
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