Terabit - per - second speed chip

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/201...-speed.ars

I thought this was really cool. IBM is currently developing a new optical chip (using light instead of electrons) which has the power to

The Holey Optochip uses 4.7 watts in delivering nearly one trillion bits per second, enough to download 500 HD movies. At 5.2 mm by 5.8 mm, it's about one-eighth the size of a dime.

500 HD movies? holy hell lol

Maybe I should hold off on buying a new laptop until these babies are installed in a consumer use one.

what

no seriously what
i don't understand that comparison at all.

how can a processor download movies

Yes, this will make your download speed faster. Makes sense.

what

no seriously what
i don't understand that comparison at all.

how can a processor download movies

Think of transfer rates.

what

no seriously what
i don't understand that comparison at all.

how can a processor download movies

This isn't a processor, it's the interconnect for parallel processors. It's like a network between multiple CPUs on the same system.
The point of the analogy was to describe the volume of data it is capable of processing in terms that make sense to things people do every day.

They'll need significant adaptation to have any usage commercially, because right now the best use for them that I can see would be applications and databases that have to pass huge sets of data back and forth, such as within mainframes. There's very little comparable work in normal computing, except possibly video rendering and that can be better done by a dedicated GPU, so they'd need to dummy this tech down somewhat and find ways to use it that can improve a standard PC.

[MENTION=7398]Alley[/MENTION]: Oh!
[MENTION=2054]Eos[/MENTION]: Ah, I get it now. Somewhat. I think. Thanks for the clarification.

How do they use light instead of electrons for computer processing? I'm completely illiterate when it comes to these components of computer science, so please bear with me.

How do they use light instead of electrons for computer processing? I'm completely illiterate when it comes to these components of computer science, so please bear with me.

I'm just as lost as you are. In fact, I don't even know how they use electrons in the first place.

How do they use light instead of electrons for computer processing? I'm completely illiterate when it comes to these components of computer science, so please bear with me.

Not processing. Data transfer between processors.
It's a parallelism tactic, since multiple CPUs have to be able to communicate effectively with each other coordinate who's doing what and distribute and consolidate units of work.

So then how does that all work with light as opposed to electrons? I'm essentially asking a classic Google interview question (explain [complex and intensive computing facet] to your five-year-old nephew in two sentences), though thankfully I'm more intelligent and have a longer attention span than a five-year-old, so please, if anyone has a moment to explain it sounds like [MENTION=1102]Kalovale[/MENTION] and I are both curious.

Or you could just read the wikipedia article on optical computing, transistors, logic gates and not require anyone else to spoon feed you.

How do they use light instead of electrons for computer processing? I'm completely illiterate when it comes to these components of computer science, so please bear with me.

Maybe photons are more manageable.

Edit: Thought it had to be the speed but told myself that they should be about the same speed and it ended up being the speed.

Edit: Thought it had to be the speed but told myself that they should be about the same speed and it ended up being the speed.

Exactly how many things do you know of that are as fast or faster than light? :f6:

Exactly how many things do you know of that are as fast or faster than light? :f6:

Thought electrons would be moving as fast or at least close but the more I think about it the sillier it sounds.

Or you could just read the wikipedia article on optical computing, transistors, logic gates and not require anyone else to spoon feed you.

In my defense I never claimed I was interested, just clueless.

In my defense I never claimed I was interested, just clueless.

Right. Because an uninterested audience is exactly who anyone wants to spend effort dummying down high level technical data for.

What computers do to translate electrons (or rather a flow of electrons) to zeros and ones is to have a gate that either lets an electron pass (making a 1) or doesn't (making a 0).
The whole challenge is to make these gate systems, which are called transistors, smaller so they can fit even more of them into a single chip.

So is this a processor or a bus of some sort? It's not really clear in the article, but it doesn't look like they are describing a processor to me, more like an ethernet chip lol.