It's far from the first time we've seen lasers touted as a means of boosting data speeds exponentially, but Sun seems to think it has a better chance than most of making it a reality, thanks in no small part to $44 million in funding from DARPA. As The New York Times reports, that cash haul will be put to use to "explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams," which would not only allow for computers to be smaller, but as much as a thousand times faster as well. Needless to say, however, there's quite a few significant hurdles to overcome before that happens, and even Sun itself admits that there's a "50 percent chance of failure." They also say, of course, that the potential benefits are worth the risks, with them even going so far as to boast that the technology would be a way of "breaking Moore's Law."
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sun aims to speed up data by swapping wires for frickin' laser beams
It's far from the first time we've seen lasers touted as a means of boosting data speeds exponentially, but Sun seems to think it has a better chance than most of making it a reality, thanks in no small part to $44 million in funding from DARPA. As The New York Times reports, that cash haul will be put to use to "explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams," which would not only allow for computers to be smaller, but as much as a thousand times faster as well. Needless to say, however, there's quite a few significant hurdles to overcome before that happens, and even Sun itself admits that there's a "50 percent chance of failure." They also say, of course, that the potential benefits are worth the risks, with them even going so far as to boast that the technology would be a way of "breaking Moore's Law."
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