Posted on 07/30/2010 12:19:52 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
On Tuesday, Intel demonstrated the worlds first practical data connection using silicon photonics - a 50 gigabit per second optical data connection built around an electrically pumped hybrid silicon laser. They achieved the 50 gigabit/s data rate by multiplexing 4 12.5 gigabit/s wavelengths into one fiber - wavelength division multiplexing. Intel dubbed its demo the 50G Silicon Photonics Link.
Fiber optic data transmission isnt anything new - its the core of what makes the internet as we know it today possible. What makes Intels demonstration unique is that theyve fabricated the laser primarily out of a low-cost, mass-produceable, highly understood material - silicon.
For years, chip designers and optical scientists alike have dreamt about the possibilities of merging traditional microelectronics and photonics. Superficially, one would expect it to be easy - after all, both fundamentally deal with electromagnetic waves, just at different frequencies (MHz and GHz for microelectronics, THz for optics).
On one side, microelectronics deals with integrated circuits and components such as transistors, copper wires, and the massively understood and employed CMOS manufacturing process. Its the backbone of microprocessors, and at the core of conventional computing today. Conversely, photonics employes - true to its name - photons, the basic unit of light. Silicon photonics is the use of optical systems that use silicon as the primary optical medium, instead of other more expensive optical materials. Eventually, photonics has the potential to supplant microelectronics with optical analogues of traditional electrical components - but thats decades away.
Until recently, successfully integrating the two was a complex balance of manufacturing and leveraging photonics only when it was feasible.
(Excerpt) Read more at anandtech.com ...
And after the HW guys do their thing, you software geeks come along and bloat the code up some more, and bring the hardware back down to a crawl.
The never ending cycle.
It faster than a GM Volt.
ASML - Powering the next phase of semiconductor manufacturing
How about Weeds, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Dr. Who, Eureka, and the Office?
There is always youtube...see above links.
Yep, it happens. First you get it working, although it might be a resource hog. Then you find the hot spots and optimize the code and memory usage.
There are also errors to consider... the CICS system software I wrote devoted a bunch of code to error detection / handling / messages, and so forth. You only take an OLTP system down because something catastrophic has happened. :-)
- Big, inefficient and correct is tolerable in limited situations
- Small, efficient and buggy is a no-no
- As long as you're correct, there should be a reasonable trade-off between the other two options.
BFLR
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