Advantages of photon transmission are obvious. Requires less power and does not heat conductors. In addition, through the luminous flux can be passed, more information at a lower cost of equipment. Optical fiber has long been used for the exchange of information between network segments, but its benefits have so far not been fully exploited. Processing flow in any case by conventional silicon processors, requiring recoding of photons. So there is a need for expensive media converter, slowing down the system.
IBM Corp, which has long been working on photonic computing, announced the creation of processor, which combines elements of traditional Synchronised electronics and photonic components. For the reception and transmission of photons processor has a certain, unspecified, number of channels, each of which can communicate with up to 25 gigabits per second.
The obvious place of such processors include data centers and network nodes ISPs. Demonstration of the prototype will take place at the nearest branch of the conference International Electron Devices Meetin in San Francisco.