San Francisco (CA) - CPUs are accelerating their gain of processing power and, in the near future, Intel believes that a single chip could perform a trillion instructions per second and replace dozens of servers. At the IDF, the firm gave a sneak peek of an upcoming 80-core processor for the "mega data-center."
Intel and UCSB have been partnering up on laser research for several years. Lasers are well known for their gigantic data transmission rates as evidenced in fiber optic cables, but you couldn't put those cables on computer chips, until now. Using CMOS manufacturing techniques, Intel and UCSB etched tiny tunnels or wave guides onto chips. Then a layer of indium-phospide was stacked on top. Light is produced and travels down the wave guide when electrical current is applied to the layers.
Bowers explained that traditional expenses for lasers have been high, but Intel's method is much cheaper because it uses the same manufacturing facilities.
So far Intel has been able to pack 25 lasers onto thin bars and 1000 lasers onto square chips. Bowers and Rattner gave what they say is the world's first onstage demonstration of a hybrid laser. Attendees gawked at monitors which showed the beam end of a prototype four-laser chip. The beams momentarily disappeared off the screens after Rattner placed his hotel keycard into the path.
The new chip will have at least 25 lasers which will be multiplexed into a single fiber optic outbound link with 1 TB/s bandwidth. Rattner said this was a 50 times increase in bandwidth over comparable electrical links and added that "hundreds of wires" were being eliminated.