Wow! That’s Fast! April 1, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Technology , add a commentIBM last week at the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference showed off a prototype of a tiny optical chipset capable of moving data at 160 Gbps, making it possible to download a high-def movie in one second. The optical transceiver streams data over light pulses sent through plastic tubes. It’s eight times faster than existing optical technology, where data travels over electrons through copper wire at rates of 2.5 Gbytes to 5 Gbytes per second.
As the technology matures, it could find its way into the home, although that is probably 4-5 years off. A high-definition movie arriving over cable could be processed and stored in a second, using a set-top box with the optical transceiver; it takes at least 30 minutes with the fastest connections today. The technology could pave the way for devices that almost instantly transmit a digital X-ray to a doctor’s hand-held screen, a seismic analysis to an oil engineer’s workstation or movies around home networks.
Check it out at InformationWeek
