Computer processors are kind of like Steve Austin (the bionic man); they become smaller, faster, better. However unlike Steve, processors will still be used in some form or another long after today’s become obsolete. They actually will become faster and more efficient, well according to IBM they will. The company has recently unveiled a new chip that combines electrical and optical devices on the same chip. Called CMOS integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, the chip incorporates Nanophotonics that enable the chip to communicate using pulses of light rather than electrical signals. Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president of Science and Technology at IBM Research says that, “The development of the Silicon Nanophotonics technology brings the vision of on-chip optical interconnections much closer to reality, with optical communications embedded into the processor chips, the prospect of building power-efficient computer systems with performance at the Exaflop level is one step closer to reality.” An Exaflop super computer can perform one million trillion calculations a second. That’s considerably faster than anything in use today. Then new technology can be made using the standard CMOS process and doesn’t need any special tooling to do so. To do this researchers at IBM have made a suite of compact active and passive silicon nanophotonics that are scaled down to the smallest size that dielectric optics can be at this point. I wonder how much heat is generated when these chips are running at full potential. More here :http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33115.wss
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Picture from IBM's website, rights there of
