Tiny supercomputers to see the light at 9:59 AM

SUPERCOMPUTERS SEE LIGHT Computer scientists say they've managed to more efficiently convert electrical signals into light pulses, paving the way for supercomputers to one day fit on a single chip.

Scientists from computer giant IBM say they have produced electro-optic modulators 100 to 1000 times smaller than comparable silicon photonics modulators and small enough to fit on a processor chip.

They publish their research in the journal Optics Express.

By connecting processing cores on a chip by light instead of wires, the researchers say that problems of high energy consumption and heat generated by multi-core chips could be bypassed, enabling leaps in computing power.

The researchers say they have connected hundreds or thousands of processing cores on a tiny chip.

Using light rather than wires to connect processing cores on microchips will allow leaps in computer power, an industry scientist says. But that will be at least 10-15 years away(Source: iStockphoto)

By comparison, there are nine cores on the chips that power computer games consoles.

Dr Will Green, IBM's lead scientist on the project, says that using light instead of wires to send information between the cores could be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.

Green says the company used standard industry processes and tools to make the tiny silicon electro-optic modulators.

That gave the research team confidence the process could be replicated commercially, although it would probably take at least a decade.

"We're looking at much more real-world applications in the time frame of 10-15 years or something like that," Green says.

He says in the future, tiny supercomputers on a chip could expend as little energy as a light bulb, paving the way for enormous reductions in cost, energy, heat and space required while increasing communications bandwidth.

Drastically shrinking the size and energy requirements of supercomputing could open up possibilities of powerful data analysis in remote locations or high-resolution 3D image rendering in real time, Green says.

The research team has been working on the project, partly funded by a US government defence research agency, for about five years. Green declined to comment on the project's budget.