IBM Discovery May Lead To Exascale Supercomputers

alphadogg writes "IBM researchers have made a breakthrough in using pulses of light to accelerate data transfer between chips, something they say could boost the performance of supercomputers by more than a thousand times. The new technology, called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics, integrates electrical and optical modules on a single piece of silicon, allowing electrical signals created at the transistor level to be converted into pulses of light that allow chips to communicate at faster speeds, said Will Green, silicon photonics research scientist at IBM. The technology could lead to massive advances in the power of supercomputers, according to IBM."

Exascale is not a word.

[clone52431]

A whole dictionary full of perfectly good words and they have to make one up to mean “very large”...

Finally, Optical Computers!

[nickersonm]

We have reached an informational threshold which can only be crossed by harnessing the speed of light directly. The quickest computations require the fastest possible particles moving along the shortest paths. Since the capability now exists to take our information directly from photons travelling molecular distances, the final act of the information revolution will soon be upon us.
-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

Now I just need room temperature superconductors to build my gatling laser speeders.

Re:Exascale is not a word.

[WrongSizeGlass]

Exascale is not a word

A whole dictionary full of perfectly good words and they have to make one up to mean “very large”...

Exascale is a perfectly cromulent word.

Re:GPU = supercomputer?

[Locke2005]

Of course it's a weapon! Have you ever been hit over the head with a Power Mac G4?

Re:GPU = supercomputer?

[cthulhu11]

I've had a PDP-11/40 drop on my foot -- does that count?