What is Digg?80 Comments
- accessviolation, on 12/06/2007, -0/+32I bet the talk with the marketing department went something like this:
Excellent work Johnson. What do you call the it?
The Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator!
No, no. People will never invest with a name like that.
How about "Ultra LaZer Core Technology"?
Johnson, you've done it again, you son of a bitch! - roodammy44, on 12/06/2007, -1/+16I don't get why people are digging legoalert down.
Asking questions is usually a sign of intelligence.
The people who never ask questions are the dumbasses - imightbewrong, on 12/06/2007, -1/+14instead of 0's and 1's of electricity( basically on and off), flashes of light would be used to communicate between cores. One core would blink the light and the other would have a sensor which reads light and convert the flashes into 0's and 1's. This would all take place inside the central processing unit (cpu).
- Hockey13, on 12/06/2007, -0/+12I'd like to see the potato chip industry spend this much time trying to make their products more efficient somehow.
- ell0bo, on 12/06/2007, -0/+9sure, as soon as I type that it takes the 60 seconds for me to realize I'm a god damn idiot.
- DjOverEZ, on 12/06/2007, -2/+11I miss the days when IBM ruled the tech world with an iron fist. Come on Big Blue, get back on that horse!
- geminitojanus, on 12/06/2007, -0/+7..which then hit some copper and eventually hit a fiber backbone.
- mal1964, on 12/06/2007, -0/+7They do the bag get smaller and the price get larger
- XBSHX, on 12/06/2007, -1/+7make the chips more aerodynamic, too much damn drag on those ruffles.
- MxM111, on 12/06/2007, -2/+8Actually there is nothing new there, seriously. Many companies worked on this technology for many years. It improves gradually, but it makes nice article for general public to pretend that there is some kind of breakthrough there...
- bratterscain, on 12/06/2007, -0/+5Because there's too many ***** who are tightasses with info. They probably want others to share it with them but don't want to share it themselves. That way they can hold the power, or so they think and say, "nyah, nyah, I know something you don't know". Hence, another reason why open source models tend to grow rather quickly.
- powrslave, on 12/06/2007, -0/+5Once we eliminate copper completely from machines --we'll have acceptable frame rates with dx10.
- legoalert33, on 12/06/2007, -10/+15I don't get it, anyone care to explain more?
- JAKN, on 12/06/2007, -1/+6for the record: light years are a measure of distance
- greenlight2001, on 12/06/2007, -2/+6I connect to the internet through invisible waves in the air.
- 89vision, on 12/06/2007, -0/+4rememeber WOW chips?
- blackmage439, on 12/06/2007, -1/+4This type of transmission is already done with the use of fiber optic cabling, and at a slower speed, Infrared light. The problem is with miniaturization. It will be interesting to see what the 'actual' speed difference is when this comes to fruition.
Well written, explanatory article as well. Good for us IT nerds. - krets, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3for the record: sarcasm means praising someone when you really think they're an idiot
- NJank, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3yeah! let's replace the fat with a plastic derivative! Other than a few cases of "anal leakage", what could go wrong?
- counterplex, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3The bandwidth of a carrier is determined by Nyquist's Law and is dependent on the maximum frequency in the carrier. Infrared, while still light, has a longer wavelenth (and thus lower frequency) than ultra-violet therefore the theoretical bandwidth of ultraviolet is higher than that of infrared. The upside to having lower frequency is that infrared can travel longer distances without attenuation and is therefore visible at longer distances. This is why e.g. traffic lights and brakes are red and why people aren't allowed to smoke cigarettes in public during a blackout for an air raid.
This is what I remember from my studies a while back. I'm sure some young whipper snapper will correct my errors soon :) Thank you whipper snapper :) - mal1964, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3Big Blue(Green)
- mal1964, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3Design; 9.1
Flavor; 1.9 - jftitan, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3There is no such thing as a stupid question.... just stupid people.
- andywebb95, on 12/06/2007, -0/+3Yes those were a blast.
Or should I say those were the *****. - imacashew, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2Pringles chips are the epitome of efficiency
- Scrappy1850, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2they need to make beef jerky that is shaped and packaged exactly the same as current pringles.
- geminitojanus, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2It doesn't really matter if you can continue shrinking chips endlessly, but here's a shocking fact for you: we can't.
We're getting close to what physics tells us will be the limit of smaller transistor construction, which means doing exclusive 2d layout is no longer an option (as you'd end up building chips with far, far too much distance between transistors). In order to beat capacitive losses and resistive losses from the wire lengths that have to traverse the whole chip, you design the chip as two different segments, stack them, and bond them together with a laser interconnect. Tada, no more drilling TSVs, no more heat being lost to wires that are several millimeters in length, etc.
They've been doing this research for years because quite frankly, we thought this endgame would come much sooner than it has. We've taken transistor construction down to the point where we can start counting trace thicknesses accurately in numbers of atoms. But now it's coming upon us that if we don't do something to get a handle on the situation now, we won't have a solution when we need it, so TSV and silicon laser technology has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year even. - acarr, on 12/06/2007, -2/+4have you ever heard of fiber optics? It's how you get 5.1 audio to your stereo, and how you're connected to the internet.
- accessviolation, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2We all have our days. Thanks for the lulz.
- qwertydvorak, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2pringles needs to make tortilla chips that are shaped and packaged exactly the same as current pringles.
- nbcaffeine, on 12/06/2007, -0/+2how about we just turn them 90 degrees so everything slides off of their desks?
- flair1, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1you need to be an IBMer to even know what Sametime is
- ScottyMcBaggs, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Are you ***** kidding me? This ***** is common knowledge. You still cannot blame a company for what someone does with their *****. Even though they knew what was going on, do you really think generations later, anybody who had anything at all to do with that is still working at IBM? The involvement of IBM's machines in the holocaust is a moot point; we're talking about their advances in technology here. NOBODY besides bleeding hearts and conspiracy theorists give a ***** about this.
"***** IBM" he says without knowing that most of the ***** that makes life convenient today happens on great big IBM machines. - rune420, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Modulators are nothing new, like mentioned above they are what makes cabled ethernet and similar things possible. The news here is that they have made modulators that are a lot smaller than what was previously possible, and that this opens up new uses for them (like communication between cores on a chip).
- glinsvad, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Frequency-dependent dispersion in condenced matter, e.g. optical lenses
- Wo1ke, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1How does Infrared light travel slower than regular light, if light speed is a constant?
- xerexes1, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1Really? I thought the bags got bigger and you got fewer, but larger, chips?
- inactive, on 12/07/2007, -0/+1Does it really matter how fast the signal moves across the wire in something like a CPU? It seems like the limiting factor would be how fast you can switch it on and off.
- PleaseJustDie, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1the anal leakage sucked
- inactive, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1You know what controls light switching? Nanoswitches.
- TwenT4, on 12/09/2007, -0/+1Can people stop using open ended, question-like presuppositions as article headlines?
- spectre_25gt, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1So, does that mean Pringles go up to 11?
- TheGuruStud, on 12/07/2007, -0/+1blasting *****, maybe ?!?!
- Fergy, on 12/07/2007, -0/+1The nice thing about light is that it's easy to contain(not leak) so it's very energy efficient and you can easily separate it from other parts of the chip so you can power down those parts.
- Kenban, on 12/06/2007, -0/+1I believe the submitter got this story wrong and it is about transmission between chips and not between cores inside of a chip. The internal voltage of a processor is only around a third of the signal voltage used on the 700+ pins on the chip. Replacing the many pins with just a few for voltage and a single fiber optic line for signals would lower the thermal envelope of the chip. The power loss between the cores communication is very minor.
- ScottyMcBaggs, on 12/06/2007, -1/+2Yea, blame IBM for the holocaust. Maybe blame Smith and Wesson for a shooting? You dolt.
- Fergy, on 12/07/2007, -0/+1The world doesn't work like that anymore. Microsoft and Apple are the only company's that sort of try to rule with an iron fist but fail most of the time.
- grahamj1978, on 12/06/2007, -0/+0By my understanding light transmission between cores and other components would be faster over the comparatively large distance between the cores because the transmission speed and power of the light wouldn't be hampered by parasitic capacitances and other constraints of transmission via silicon. In other words while electrons can technically move at the speed of light, they're hampered by having to travel through silicon and whatever transistors may be in their path.
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