160Gigabits per Second to Be a Standard

IBM has done it again with a new prototype of optical transceiver, which - according to them - is able to transfer information up to eight times faster than normal optical components available today. This being said, you should be able to do a serious upgrade, maybe to a couple of SCSI hard drives linked in RAID 0 mode just to catch up to the speed this medium is able to transmit, and think what it would do to the processor; that much bandwidth needs a lot of processing power.

In an example given by IBM it would be able to download a "typical high definition feature-length film" in "a single second compared to 30 minutes or more". And the best thing isn't the speed, it's the manufacturing costs; in order to be integrated in normal chipsets, the optical transceiver is built with driver and receiver integrated circuits on CMOS technology, thus allowing the use of the same low-cost technology that is being used in today's chips.

Doctor. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science & Technology, IBM Research stated that: "The explosion in the amount of data being transferred, when downloading movies, TV shows, music or photos, is creating demand for greater bandwidth and higher speeds in connectivity. Greater use of optical communications is needed to address this issue. We believe our optical transceiver technology may provide the answer."

The CMOS technology doesn't suffice for the connectivity of the optical transceiver in an integrated chipset, so they used materials such as indium phosphide (InP), and gallium arsenide (GaAs). The entire package size is of 3.25 by 5.25 millimeters in size, and the product unveiling will take place at the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference.