petralynn writes to tell us the New York Times is reporting that Standford engineers have discovered a method to modulate a beam of laser light up to 100 billion times a second. The new technology apparently uses materials that are already in wide use throughout the semiconductor industry. From the article: "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."Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='tech,science';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; Engineers Report Breakthrough in Laser Beam Tech Log in/Create an Account | Top | 187 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 187 comments 0: 185 comments 1: 145 comments 2: 87 comments 3: 28 comments 4: 20 comments 5: 15 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. More informative article: (Score:5, Informative) by TripMaster Monkey (862126) * on Wednesday October 26, @04:02PM (#13883633) The NYT story is pretty light on the technical details....a more detail-oriented write-up can be found here [eurekalert.org]... and you don't have to register to read it. [ Reply to ThisRe:More informative article: by AKAImBatman (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:06PMRe:More informative article: by olddotter (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:11PM Re:More informative article: (Score:5, Funny) by fishybell (516991) <fishybellNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday October 26, @04:17PM (#13883766) (http://www.fishybell.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 26, @02:11PM) Well, that link is a little better. I recommend this [slashdot.org] one instead, since it has a coherent summary and has numerous comments from industry analysts. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:More informative article: by Guppy06 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:06PMRe:More informative article: by amliebsch (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @04:37PMRe:More informative article: by JJman (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @09:28PMRe:More informative article: by macdaddy357 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @10:45PM Re:An Open Letter to Solid State and Photonics Lab (Score:4, Insightful) by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Wednesday October 26, @04:24PM (#13883828) Dude.Your tinfoil hat slipped loose. [ Reply to This | ParentAn Open Letter to Anonymous Coward by montreal!hahahahah (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:30PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.4 replies beneath your current threshold. Does that mean... (Score:1, Funny) by Signal_Noise (801973) on Wednesday October 26, @04:02PM (#13883638) That I can disco dance a billion times faster? [ Reply to This 100 billion hits per second (Score:2) by thewiz (24994) * on Wednesday October 26, @04:03PM (#13883640) Looks like the NY Times servers can't handle the /.ing! [ Reply to This BugMeNot shortcut for 'ya ... (Score:5, Informative) by xmas2003 (739875) * <xmas2003b@Nospam.komar.org> on Wednesday October 26, @04:03PM (#13883643) (http://www.komar.org/) NYT registration required to read this John Markoff (infamous at Slashdotbecause of his "sensational" coverage of Kevin Mitnick) article ... but fortunately,BugMeNot [bugmenot.com] comes to the rescue with username/password of "twernt/twernt"This work was funded by Intel and DARPA with some assistance from anHP researcher and uses something called theQuantum-Confined Stark Effect [google.com] withprimary application in optical networking gear ... but hey, maybewe'll see a 100 GHz PC in the not-too-distant future.The halloween webcam is up [komar.org] ... but X10 technology isn't capable of 100 Billion times/second updates ... ;-) [ Reply to ThisQuantum Optical Laptops by scovetta (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:22PMRe:Quantum Optical Laptops by systemic chaos (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:41AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Or use NYT Link Generator!! by antdude (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:40PMQuantum-Confined Stark Effect by ScrewMaster (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:35PM WTF is Standford University? (Score:5, Funny) by winkydink (650484) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 26, @04:04PM (#13883648) (http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 14, @03:13PM) Is that the one across the bay from Berkly? [ Reply to This Re:WTF is Standford University? (Score:5, Funny) by Reality Master 101 (179095) <RealityMaster101 ... m ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday October 26, @04:11PM (#13883705) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday August 08, @05:41PM) And, more importantly, does Standford's football team suck as much as Stanford's? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:WTF is Standford University? by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:32PMRe:WTF is Standford University? by FuckTheModerators (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:35PMRe:WTF is Standford University? by nherm (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:35PMIts Leyland Stanford Junior University by iambarry (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:50PMRe:Its Leyland Stanford Junior University by iambarry (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @05:11PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:WTF is Standford University? by kclittle (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:53PMRe:WTF is Standford University? by Cyclon (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:04PMRe:WTF is Standford University? by SoCalEd (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @05:16PMA Dislexic Would Say by Ranger (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @05:33PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Modulated the power of my laptop (Score:1) by jurt1235 (834677) on Wednesday October 26, @04:04PM (#13883649) (http://www.hipersonik.com/) At about the same frequency. Now you can do a lasershow in the cloud of smoke. Does that count as research too? [ Reply to This Modulating Laser... (Score:4, Funny) by mcsestretch (926118) on Wednesday October 26, @04:05PM (#13883656) But will it pop a huge jiffy-pop container in my professor's house by shooting it from a plane? [ Reply to ThisRe:Modulating Laser... by DarthStrydre (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:15PMRe:Modulating Laser... by nullset (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @04:18PMRe:Modulating Laser... by SatanicPuppy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:19PM All I wanted... (Score:5, Funny) by parasonic (699907) on Wednesday October 26, @04:05PM (#13883657) ...was chips with frickin' laser beams! [ Reply to ThisRe:All I wanted... by Admiral Ackbar 8 (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @04:37PMWarning stickers... by TiggertheMad (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:04PM Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:1) by sdo1 (213835) on Wednesday October 26, @04:06PM (#13883675) (Last Journal: Tuesday April 08, @11:19PM) I guess I naively thought that the speed of electrons in a wire was roughly the same as the speed of light, or at least "nearly" the speed of light. Can someone explain what the real advantage is?-S [ Reply to ThisRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by cheddarlump (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:11PMRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by Incongruity (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @04:20PM Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:4, Informative) by DarthStrydre (685032) on Wednesday October 26, @04:21PM (#13883800) The speed of the electrons is on the order of cm/s, and is related to the current density.The electromotive force, or voltage, travels at about the speed of light.Picture a hose of water. The water (electrons) takes a long time to get from one end to the other... but the effect of putting water in one end is immediately seen at the other end (within reason).With AC, electrons never really gain ground in a balanced load situation. Back and forth and .. . . . [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by osobear (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:26PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by Detritus (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:22PM Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:5, Informative) by Red Flayer (890720) on Wednesday October 26, @04:24PM (#13883833) The modulation. The signal travels at about the same time, but you can turn it on and off much much faster... so the density of bits per unit of time is much higher. Normal signal: ____----____----____---- 0 1 0 1 0 1 New hawtness: _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- 010101010101010101010101 Both took the same amount of time to travel down the pipe. But one conveyed 4x the information. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by mrtroy (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:26PM Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:5, Informative) by joe_bruin (266648) on Wednesday October 26, @04:31PM (#13883891) (http://slashdot.org/~joe_bruin/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 14, @10:25PM) The speed of electricity in a wire is not really the issue (it's about half the speed of light, I think. I'm sure someone will correct me). The real issue is signal propagation. When a transistor switches from closed to open or back, the electrical signal travelling through the wire is not a perfect on/off. The voltage ramps up or ramps down as some function of the length of the connection, width of the wire, conductivity, leakage from the transistor, inductance, ... The system needs a bit of time to "settle" into the new high or low state. This is a big limiting factor in the clocking of modern CPUs. For communication off the chip, it's far worse. Now the lines are no longer 90nm (or whatever the chip was made at) in width, and have to go through a far longer distance. That's why today's processors are limited at around 1GHz to the outside world, while internally they can be faster.Optical interconnects alleviate many of these problems. With a laser, the ramp up time is significantly shorter, there's no capacitance in the system, and it is far less prone to interference. So, on a 100 GHz optical link you can multiplex 100 1GHz pins (essentially running a P4's FSB on two wires instead of something like 180), thereby significantly reducing the pin count. Or you could run the pins 100 times as fast, meaning much less processor waiting on RAM or bus data. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:5, Informative) by Chris Burke (6130) on Wednesday October 26, @04:35PM (#13883911) (http://slashdot.org/) Yeah, that's not true. I don't know how fast an electron moves (I'm assuming not the speed of light, since they have mass, and that quantum physics I know little about probably comes into play), but in a normal conductor they don't move very far before slamming into something. Individual electrons don't move that far or fast on their own, it's the aggregate and resulting field that really moves.But that's not really the problem. Transmit time is still quite low (I've heard 1ns per 6 in of trace on a board). Latency isn't really the problem. The problem is -- how fast can you change the signal? That's bandwidth. Here electrical conductors suffer because of parasitic capacitance and inductance, skin effects, reflections, induced current from nearby conductors, and a whole host of other signal integrity issues. It gets worse the longer the channel is and the more things you have connected to it. If you're wondering why the MP Pentium 4s have been on a 100MHz QDR front side bus since they were released, this is why. It's also why even point-to-point interconnect like AMDs has only recently broken 1 GHz.Optics don't really have this issue. Two fiber optic cables next to each other don't interfere with each other. You don't have to overcome the capacitance of the channel to change from one value to the next. You just send photons of one frequency, and then switch to the next. As fast as you can switch is how much bandwidth you can get.Alright, I'm not really liking this explanation anymore. To just directly answer your question: the advantage is 100 GHz interconnect in a way that could potentially be built into chips. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by Antonymous Flower (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:42PMWhat really is moving - the electrons or the hole? by SonicSpike (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:15PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:4, Informative) by Rob the Bold (788862) on Wednesday October 26, @04:36PM (#13883922) The speed an electric signal will propogate in a transmission line is somewhat less than 1C. The value of 0.1C in a sibling post is a good rule of thumb. Think of your transmission line as a bunch of inductors in series and a bunch of capacitors in parallel (imagine a ladder with inductor legs and capacitor rungs). At each step along the way you need to charge up the capacitor before current will move to the next inductor, where your current will charge up the magnetic flux and then on to the next cap, etc.You can build what's called an "aritficial transmission line" in just such a manner. It simulates the effect of a much longer pair of wires for lab purposes. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by 9Nails (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:45PM Re:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? (Score:4, Informative) by IvyKing (732111) on Wednesday October 26, @04:47PM (#13884016) First off, the electron velocity in wire is much less than the propagation velocity through the same wire.Now for the fun part - What is the velocity of propagation?For frequencies were the inductive reactance of the conductor is significantly larger than the resistance of that conductor at that frequency (think skin effect), then the velocity of propagation is c divided by the square root of the effective relative dielectric constant. This is often referred to as an LC transmission line since propagation is dominated by the series inductance and shunt capaitance. LC lines have a propagation velocity independent of frequency (at least to the first order). As an example, coaxial cable with a solid polyethylene dielectric will have a propagation velocity of 0.66c, which would be valid from a few hundred kHz to several GHz.When the the conductor resistance is greater than the inductive reactance, then the line becomes an RC line where the "propagation velocity" is dependent on frequency (dispersive) and the time for a transition to propagate is proportional to the square of the line length. The effective "propagation velocity" is going to be a lot less than c. Turns out that the interconnects on chips are RC lines - and it is often necessary to insert inverters on a line to speed things up (recall that propagation time varies with the square of the line length) - a good rule of thumb is to space the inverters so the the propagation delay equals the gate delay.The RC problem is why loading coils were put on phone lines - the inductive reactance of the coils is larger than the resistance and the line becomes an LC. The loading coils are bad news for DSL - and an unloaded line looks like an LC line at the frequencies used by the DSL modems.A good reference for this is High Speed Digital Design, a Handbook of Black Magic by Johnson and Graham. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by freidog (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:59PMRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by budgenator (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:49PMRe:Speed of light vs. speed of electrons in wire? by vertinox (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:52PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. There's still a problem... (Score:1) by josephdrivein (924831) on Wednesday October 26, @04:07PM (#13883683) Well, actual technology has a maximum bandwidth of 10-100Ghz... How do you elaborate such a quick signal? [ Reply to ThisRe:There's still a problem... by Sebilrazen (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @06:00PM I'm still betting on qubits (Score:1) by neologee (532218) on Wednesday October 26, @04:12PM (#13883711) (http://schizoslim.blogspot.com/) Having a look at Quantum computers development [qubit.org], i still think that this will be the next Big leap in performance!By 2010-15 (that's already pretty far out) i could imagine processors will need a complete new mechanism to go any faster. [ Reply to This Re:I'm still betting on qubits (Score:5, Informative) by GameMaster (148118) on Wednesday October 26, @04:46PM (#13884008) Quantum computers are great, in theory, but even if we are able to figure out how to build one that actually works they are only capable of solving certain types of problems. Our present understanding of quantum physics tells us that you can't design a quantum computer that can do all the same math problems as a generic Intel/AMD CPU (e.i. run Windows; play Counterstrike; etc.).That being said, the problems that can be solved by quantum computers tend to be the ones that would take a regular CPU until the end of the universe to perform (break strong encryption, large traveling salesman problems, etc.). At some point, if we can make a quantum computer compact enough, we might end up having quantum co-processors built into out PCs but we'll probably never see the CPU of our PC replaced by a quantum computer.The tech being discussed in the article would be directly applicable to making generic PCs run faster (though it could also have the potential to improve communication speeds with a hypothetical quantum computer as well). Another tech that will probably be leveraged to make generic systems faster is the replacement of silicon in computer chips with diamond. Since diamond can handle vastly higher temperatures than silicon, without melting, it is theoretically possible to push the clock speed on a diamond based CPU much higher than on today's silicon CPUs.-GameMaster [ Reply to This | Parentmod parent up! by sbma44 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:12PMRe:I'm still betting on qubits by Heembo (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @10:20PMRe:I'm still betting on qubits by Lobachevsky (Score:1) Thursday October 27, @12:51AM Who?? (Score:5, Funny) by Maradine (194191) * on Wednesday October 26, @04:12PM (#13883717) (http://www.drahzia.net/) petralynn writes to tell us the New York Times is reporting that Standford engineers. . .That's awesome. I can't wait for Hraverd and Yalle to catch up. [ Reply to ThisRe:Who?? by MyHair (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @08:00PMRe:Who?? by IceFoot (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:08PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. I can't wait until Intel makes a chip with it (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26, @04:13PM (#13883718) It'll probably put out as much heat an light as the sun. [ Reply to ThisRe:I can't wait until Intel makes a chip with it by hcob$ (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:30PMRe:I can't wait until Intel makes a chip with it by stevel (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:49PM Dear mister engineer (Score:1, Offtopic) by Killjoy_NL (719667) <palliNO@SPAMstc-r.nl> on Wednesday October 26, @04:13PM (#13883720) I love youSincerely,a hardware enthousiast (and laser lover) [ Reply to ThisOne Question: by karnal (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:21PM Obligatory Reference (Score:3, Funny) by Stibidor (874526) on Wednesday October 26, @04:13PM (#13883728) (http://ray-tracer.blogspot.com/) So can they attach them to sharks' heads yet? [ Reply to ThisRe:Obligatory Reference by sameerdesai (Score:3) Wednesday October 26, @04:24PM Desktop power not going up much? (Score:5, Interesting) by Omega1045 (584264) on Wednesday October 26, @04:14PM (#13883730) and are one of the reasons the clock speeds on your desktop computer have not really been going up much in recent yearsThis sounds silly to me since desktop power (say a $500 system - discounting monitor and keyboard) is increasing exponentially, doubling every two years compared to the price. The machine I built this spring was twice as powerful than a system I built in 2003 for the same money, but 8 times as powerful as a machine I built just 6 years ago and is about 128 times as powerful as the machine I had when I went to college in 92. And I am only considering pure clock speed, not increases in the efficiency of chips, growth of RAM and disk for the price, etc. While Moore's law concerning silicon chips will start faltering as we approach 2020, I have been nothing but impressed with how desktop performance continues to improve.These new laser improvements, and things like molecular computing, will help us continue on after the 2020 mark with our current exponential growth.Sorry to go off, I just got done reading The Sigularity Is Near [amazon.com] [ Reply to ThisRe:Desktop power not going up much? by gnuLNX (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:21PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by robertjw (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:09PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by a_ghostwheel (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:26PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by Omega1045 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:42PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by RicktheBrick (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:45PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by Omega1045 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @07:14PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by budgenator (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @06:59PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Desktop power not going up much? by georgewilliamherbert (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:45PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by timeOday (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:13PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by Omega1045 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:29PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by ivan256 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @11:55PMRe:Desktop power not going up much? by khayman80 (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @09:20PMRe:moores law my hindquarters by Omega1045 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:11PMRe:moores law my hindquarters by Bastian (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @05:37PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Digital Bandwidth? (Score:2, Offtopic) by dada21 (163177) <dada.dnginc@com> on Wednesday October 26, @04:15PM (#13883741) A week or so ago, I mentioned decommissioning analog & digital TV broadcast spectrum to use for ore wireless data. I mentioned how fiber was just on serendipidous discovery away from massive data rates. I was shunned as "everyone knows" there are limits to light.While this may not be THE discovery I was alluding to, it proves that the door surely isn't closed.While science can find use in this discovery, I'm more interested in profitable consumer uses. What are the possibilities there? [ Reply to This Re:Digital Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting) by amliebsch (724858) on Wednesday October 26, @04:27PM (#13883857) (Last Journal: Sunday June 26, @05:07PM) You might want to check out this article that appeared in IEEE Spectrum magazine: The Silicon Solution [ieee.org] It describes what I believe is the same breakthrough in considerable detail. The Big Deal is that lasers can now be made from standard CMOS silicon fab processes, meaning you can integrate the lasers and optoelectronics directly into the chip without needing radically new chip fab techniques. Really interesting stuff! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Digital Bandwidth? by dada21 (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:33PMRe:Digital Bandwidth? by phalanx (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @04:59PMRe:Digital Bandwidth? by Detritus (Score:2) Wednesday October 26, @04:32PMRe:Digital Bandwidth? by xTantrum (Score:1) Wednesday October 26, @05:46PM Redundancy is their linguistic bottleneck (Score:1) by dfn_deux (535506) * <dfn_doe@[ ]oo.com ['yah' in gap]> on Wednesday October 26, @04:15PM (#13883745) (http://slashdot.org/) Maybe they can get rid of "the bottle neck of bottle necks" but can they reduce the reduncancy of repeated overuse again and again also? [ Reply to This