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IBM Presents Light Speed Chipset

IBM exposed it was developing a prototype optical chipset, able to operate at speeds at least 8 times faster than currently used optical chips. The prototype was presented at the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, in Anaheim, California. This breakthrough may revolutionize the way we distribute, access and use information in communication networks, although, this technology will not become available to the wide public in the near future, as it is first expected to be utilized in business computer networks.

Scientists and researchers have been laboring for quite a while in search of more efficient use of optical signals, allowing previously unthinkable bandwidth. IBM`s new chipset is able to transmit at a rate of 160 billion bits per second, promising to fundamentally improve remote access entertainment and computing. The need to change to optical wiring, as opposed to transition through copper-wiring, has grown in recent years due to an increase in the amount of digital information transmitted through networks, in recent years.

IBM`s breakthrough system was allowed by the minimization of several components into one chipset, manufactured in standard manufacturing processes and with technology allowing mass-manufacturing. The integration of this new technology in a circuit in an electrical system such as a PC will allow it to communicate with the outside world in extremely fast speed. IBM`s tinny chip integrates a large number of high speed channels, in order to allow for the fastest transition ever allowed by a single chipset. The new IBM component is only 1 fifteenth of a dime, but is able to transmit in one second the contents equivalent to four million phone calls or an entire movie.