14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to Intel and its upcoming devices, market watchers usually only pay heed to the developments on the CPU front. As such, it sometimes happens that the Santa Clara, California-based company comes out and completely stuns the IT industry by revealing some new type of revolutionary invention. This once, Intel definitely seems to have reached in milestone in wired communications. According to the official press release, the hardware maker's researchers managed to create a silicon-based optical data connection that can already run at speeds of 50 Gbps.
Essentially, the invention is a data connection with integrated lasers dubbed the Silicon Photonics link. Mostly, it can completely outdo any cable-based communication solutions, not just in terms of speed but also length. Today's copper technology can't even match the distances that the new link can cover. The prototype is composed of a transmitter chip, which merges the beams of four 12.5 Gbps lasers, as well as a receiver chip tasked with separating them and directing them into photon detectors. Said detectors then convert the data back into electrical signals.
"This achievement of the world's first 50Gbps silicon photonics link with integrated hybrid silicon lasers marks a significant achievement in our long term vision of ‘siliconizing' photonics and bringing high bandwidth, low cost optical communications in and around future PCs, servers, and consumer devices" said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer and director of Intel Labs.
The milestone provides high possibilities for better performance and power efficiency and was unwrapped at the Integrated Photonics Research conference in California. It is still quite a way off from being used commercially however. On the other hand, Intel appears to want to cause even more severe cases of dropped jaws by pushing the transfer rate all the way up to 1 Tbps. All in all, cables definitely have their place secured for the future.