Pushing the Frontiers

eWeek.com:

Intel researchers are shedding some light on a potential new application for chip photonics: upping the performance of multicore processors.

The processor giant's research labs are exploring ways to use silicon photonics—on-chip components that use light to transmit data—to replace electrical interconnects using copper wiring and simultaneously speed up vital connections that move data into and out of processors.

Here's some mind-blowing information:

Silicon photonics could be an ideal because of its potential to offer very high bandwidth—Intel's already got gear running at 10 gigabits per second in its labs—and its ability to be designed directly into the chip itself, Vara said.

That's a theoretical bandwidth of 1.25 GB/s. The future is lovely.

Link via Tom's Hardware.