8 replies to this topic

[TPFWebmaster]

What is an Optical Chip?

Quote

[Optical Chip is] a new silicon-based networking chip that runs on light. Its makers say the technology could blow regular copper-based networking out of the water.

Take a look at it this way:

A normal networking chip can transmit a movie in about 2 hours (really fast). An optical chip odf the same size can transfer a movie in minutes (Super fast).

A normal chip has around 18 channels, better ones have UPTO 40.
An optical chip has 80 CHANNELS!

We are looking at a potential breakthrough that can completely revolutionarize the age of computing. It is the Fifth Generation of Computers.

Let me know if there an any other amazing facts about optical chips at my e-mail address: S_o_u_m_y_a_1_2_3@yahoo.co.uk

[Inspiron]

Well I believe its something got to do with fibre-optic networking. These cables are made of glass or plastic core that allows light to travel through then in a way that the cables may be bent and not disrupt the tranmission of the signal. The light signal is modulated in various frequencies so that many signals of different frequencies may be multiplexed into a single fibre-optic cable. This means many signals can be transmitted without using alot of cables. Because it the network technique uses light to transmit signals, the speed of transmission is almost comparable to the speed of light. It will not be exactly at the speed of light as the fibre-optic cable itself slows the speed down as the cable goes longer, just like when light goes through a freespace and another light goes through a smokey-densed area. But still, fibre-optics technology is still the fastest wired-based technology in current.

Fibre-Optics technology is been used for the backbone of the world's internet to provide the fastest transmission time.
People had also implemented fibre-optics networking into LAN networks, called Fibre Optic Ethernet (10BF).
More information about this, refer to http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/cour...pages/10bf.html

More information about how fibre-optics work, refer to these sites :
http://www.erg.abdn.ac.uk/users/gorry/cour...ages/fibre.html
http://floti.bell.ac...cs/fibreops.htm
http://electronics.h...fiber-optic.htm
http://www.science.o.../021/021key.htm

[liauce]

But fibre-optics are extremely expensive right? Maybe in the near future it could yes replace copper wires but I doubt the benefits outweigh the cost at the moment. I wonder what will happen if everything is suddenly so much faster. Will we cope with it??

[byte]

I always though it was encoding messages in light rays which went superfast around the computer. Meh...

[sangdukseo]

i'll go bankrupt paying for this kind of thing. Maybe in another couple decades... at the moment i have about 230 dollars extra to spend. just kidding, but yea... fiber optic, optical chips, ummm, i'll pass on that

[niloc]

A superfast computing processor that uses light, not electrons, to perform calculations.

The company that developed the processor, say its light speed calculations deliver the power of a supercomputer in a single device.

The device is called Enlight and can perform 8000 billion arithmetic operations per second, about 1000 times faster than a standard processor.

EnLight will be useful across a broad range of applications, from military projects to compressing high definition video images. Itis not a general purpose processor like a Pentium , Instead, each processor will be custom-built to perform a specific set of tasks, and will not be programmable.

Much research has been done to try to exploit the much faster speed at which light travels compared to electronic signals, but most commercial work in this area has focused mainly on optical interfaces.

[unicornrose]

liauce, on Sep 26 2005, 08:54 AM, said:

But fibre-optics are extremely expensive right? Maybe in the near future it could yes replace copper wires but I doubt the benefits outweigh the cost at the moment. I wonder what will happen if everything is suddenly so much faster. Will we cope with it??

Actually telephone companies have been slowly replacing traditional wiring with fiber optics for years. As the technology is improving the wiring gets replaced. Fiber optics are not that much more expensive than regular wires. In fact it is a little cheaper and fiber optics tend to last alot longer than traditional copper wire.

[goldinero]

unicornrose, on Oct 14 2005, 12:20 PM, said:

Actually telephone companies have been slowly replacing traditional wiring with fiber optics for years.  As the technology is improving the wiring gets replaced.  Fiber optics are not that much more expensive than regular wires.  In fact it is a little cheaper and fiber optics tend to last alot longer than traditional copper wire.

Fiber optics for long-haul communications transmission is one thing, building an optical computer is quite another. The primary barrier to building an optical computer has been making electro-optical interfaces small enough and cheap enough that they can be put on a chip to be used for data transmission for short distances.

Currently Intel (and other companies, I'm sure) is working on silicon-based light transmission. The technology is based on the concept of creating a light waveguide on a silicon chip over which the light can travel. Then using techniques similar to those used in Raman optical amplifiers, the light can be gated as ones and zeros using constructive and destructive interference.

[bonniecool]

wow! this innovation really makes our life more better. Im seeing now that soon our devices and appliances will be using optical chips that makes data transmission more faster.

But i think devices using optical chip would be expensive but still the qualities are best.