High-Speed Laser Chips Move Data at 50 Gbps
OPS_admin | Jul 28, 2010 | Comments 0
A new research breakthrough from Intel combines silicon chips and lasers to transmit data at 50 gigabits per second — and someday, maybe as fast as a terabit per second.
The 50-Gbps speed is enough to download an HD movie from iTunes, or up to 100 hours of digital music, in less than a second.
The technology, known as silicon photonics, can be used as a replacement for copper wires to connect components within computers, or between computers in data centers.
“The fundamental issue is that electronic signaling relying on copper wires is reaching its physical limits,” says Justin Rattner, chief technology officer for Intel, which announced the breakthrough Tuesday. “Photonics gives us the ability to move vast quantities of data across the room or planet at extremely high speeds and in a cost-effective manner.”
Photonics refers to the generation, modulation, switching and transmission of light, and can be done using lasers or light-emitting diodes.
Full Story: High-Speed Laser Chips Move Data at 50 Gbps | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
Filed Under: Science & Technology
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
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" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
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