Intel's silicon photonics to revolutionise computing

Anthony Caruana
Tuesday, 27 July 2010 03:00

Your IT - Mobility

Intel is working on the next generation of computing technology. And it's moving away from copper and electrons to a new way of moving data within computer systems. Like Dr Evil's favourite sharks - the next generation of computer's will come with laser beams.

Intel Labs has created the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers using Hybrid Silicon Laser technology. The new experimental chip can move data at 50Gbps with researchers pressing on to demonstrate even faster speeds. This new technology is called silicon photonics and it has the capacity to completely redefine what a computer is.

Over the last few years, performance improvements in systems have come from integrating multiple processor cores. However, data is still being moved along copper wires and traces on circuit boards. As components have become smaller, the copper traces have become finer with the result that the transmission of electrons generates more heat. It also means that the components that make up a computer need to be relatively close together.

However, by using silicon photonics, a number of copper's limitations are overcome. Higher data rates, than the limit of about 10Gbps, are possible and the components don't need to be as close together. While this development might not be a big deal for the home computer, it has huge impact on server architecture.

Today's server rooms require careful design in order to manage heat. However, silicon photonics will completely change the way server farms and rooms are designed. As data will be moved in the form of light through a system's bus, silicon photonics will allow processors, memory, storage and other components to reside in different areas.

Tomorrow's datacenter or supercomputer may see components spread throughout a building or even an entire campus, communicating with each other at high speed, as opposed to being confined by heavy copper cables with limited capacity and reach. This will allow datacenter users, such as a search engine company, cloud computing provider or financial datacenter, to increase performance, capabilities and save significant costs in space and energy, or help scientists build more powerful supercomputers to solve the world'Ÿs biggest problems.