Thursday, October 27, 2005
Faster, Cheaper Networking Power: A new discovery from Stanford, Intel & DARPA
Engineers Make Leap in Optical Networks - New York Times
Engineers from Stanford University have made a break through that may result in a real advance in the power of computing and networking. Their research was funded by the "Intel Corporation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon." A partnership of business and government making basic research possible for technological progress. Optical networks make the internet possible through fiber optic cable. Optical switches using laser light speed the transfer of information at high speed. This research has potentially enormous implications for the global digital economy. According to the Times: "Such an advance could accelerate the decline in the cost of optical networking and transform computers by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates." The hope here is that this technical innovation would make it possible to make cheaper optical switches that would could be used to "create data superhighways" in your computer and for the networking of the world:
This discovery is still very much in the research and not even at the development stage. The ability to make the use of laser beams more efficient for optical switching and storage is exciting to analysts who understand the implications of this development. Any advance that would make optical networks cheaper and more efficient will speed the wiring of the world and make global high-speed networking a reality:
The delivery of massive files and powerful services on demand would be a reality if this discovery can be developed into real products for the digital infrastructure.
Engineers from Stanford University have made a break through that may result in a real advance in the power of computing and networking. Their research was funded by the "Intel Corporation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon." A partnership of business and government making basic research possible for technological progress. Optical networks make the internet possible through fiber optic cable. Optical switches using laser light speed the transfer of information at high speed. This research has potentially enormous implications for the global digital economy. According to the Times: "Such an advance could accelerate the decline in the cost of optical networking and transform computers by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates." The hope here is that this technical innovation would make it possible to make cheaper optical switches that would could be used to "create data superhighways" in your computer and for the networking of the world:
"The vision here is that, with the much stronger physics, we can imagine large numbers - hundreds or even thousands - of optical connections off of chips," said David A. B. Miller, director of the Solid State and Photonics Laboratory at Stanford University. "Those large numbers could get rid of the bottlenecks of wiring, bottlenecks that are quite evident today and are one of the reasons the clock speeds on your desktop computer have not really been going up much in recent years."
This discovery is still very much in the research and not even at the development stage. The ability to make the use of laser beams more efficient for optical switching and storage is exciting to analysts who understand the implications of this development. Any advance that would make optical networks cheaper and more efficient will speed the wiring of the world and make global high-speed networking a reality:
"Several industry executives said the advance was significant because it meant that optical data networks were now on the same Moore's Law curve of increasing performance and falling cost that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades. In 1965, Intel's co-founder, Gordon E. Moore, noted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip was doubling at regular intervals. The semiconductor industry has held to that rate of change since then, giving rise to the modern era of microelectronics that has transformed the global economy.
Now that rate of change could be directing the future of the telecommunications industry. Computer and communications industry executives say they believe that advancements in inexpensive optical networks will transform the computer industry and other major industries as diverse as the financial marketplace and Hollywood."
The delivery of massive files and powerful services on demand would be a reality if this discovery can be developed into real products for the digital infrastructure.
