Supercomputers that consist of thousands of individual processor "brains" connected by miles of copper wires could one day fit into a laptop PC, thanks in part to a breakthrough by IBM scientists announced last week.
And while today’s supercomputers can use the equivalent energy required to power hundreds of homes, these future tiny supercomputers-on-a-chip would expend the energy of a light bulb.
In a paper published in the journal Optics Express, the IBM researchers detailed a significant milestone in the quest to send information between multiple cores -- or “brains” -- on a chip using pulses of light through silicon, instead of electrical signals on wires.
“Just like fiber optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM’s technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip,” said Dr. Will Green, the lead IBM scientist on the project.
Today, one of the most advanced chips in the world -- IBM’s Cell processor which powers the Sony Playstation 3 -- contains nine cores on a single chip. The new technology aims to enable a power-efficient method to connect hundreds or thousands of cores together on a tiny chip by eliminating the wires required to connect them. Using light instead of wires to send information between the cores can be 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.
1 | 2
