A device was invented that can improve Big Data transfers between clouds and data centers

Feb 20, 2014 09:51 GMT  ·  By

PCs interconnects are considered good if the LAN technology has Gigabit Ethernet throughput, but there are technologies that go far beyond that, and IBM has just invented one that puts all others to shame.

In cloud servers and data centers, lots of data has to be moved at the same time, either because there are many incoming connections or because large files have to be moved around.

Enterprises like to call this Big Data transferring. And since the one with the best transfer technology is liable to gain lots of royalty-paying contracts, tech experts are always devising something new.

IBM has been a major brand in the Big Data, cloud server and data center industries for some time, and it continues to be.

Especially now that it has invented a new interconnect technology that enabled 200Gb/s – 400Gb/s data transfer rates at extremely low power.

Currently still a lab prototype, the new device is described as an ultra-fast and energy efficient analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology.

“Our ADC supports IEEE standards for data communication and brings together speed and energy efficiency at 32nm enabling us to start tackling the largest Big Data applications. With Semtech as our partner, we are bringing our previous generation of the ADC to market less than 12 months since it was first developed and tested,” said Martin Schmatz, systems department manager at IBM Research.

The new device allows for complex digital equalization across long-distance fiber channels by converting analog signals to digital and approximating the right combination of zeros and ones to digitally represent the data.

Semtech has licensed the technology and has signed a non-exclusive technology licensing agreement, which means that IBM will develop its own products based on it.

Still, Semtech will go first, with a 64GS/s (giga-samples per second) chip that IBM’s 300mm fab in East Fishkill, New York will produce.

It is a full dual-channel 2x64 GS/s ADC core that generates 128 billion analog-to-digital conversions per second, with a total power consumption of 2.1W.