Busting Through Moore's Law - Nanophotonics is Here!

This is a sharp stick in the eye for all the technological sticks-in-the-mud who prophesy an end to Moore's law.

FRANKFURT - IBM says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip.

Picture it...today's supercomputer will be tomorrow's single chip. A computer that now requires enough power to run hundreds of homes will soon draw only enough to light up a single bulb.

Using light instead of wires to send information between the cores by using a silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator can be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires, IBM says.

The new modulator IBM has developed is 100 to 1,000 times smaller than previously demonstrated comparable modulators, IBM said on Thursday, paving the way for significant reductions in cost, energy and heat while increasing bandwidth.

Things just keep getting more and more exciting, yes?

Original article.

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