IBM Uses Light to Speed Data Transmission

March 27, 2007: IBM was showing off its latest breakthrough at the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference yesterday, an optical transceiver chipset that it claims can move data eight times faster than is currently possible.

Researchers at big blue claim that the prototype processor can both send and receive huge volumes of data using pulses of light, as opposed to the current method of streaming electrons down copper wires.

How much data and how fast? 160 gigabits of data per second according to IBM. A hard number to visualise, however, according sfgate.com, IBM says this chipset could reduce the download time of a HD movie from half an hour to one second.

Apart from the obvious benefits with transfer speeds, IBM also says that the technology drastically reduces power consumption, heat and most importantly – cost.

If IBM can make its transceiver it large quantities, a 160Gbps chip could be sold for between US$500 and US$600 analyst Lawrence Gasman from the Communications Industry Researchers told SFgate.com. To compare, a 40Gbps transceiver costs around US$40,000 today.

IBM hopes that the technology will serve to alleviate some of the impending storage bottlenecks on the horizon as the era of HD digital video grips the net.

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