Superfast Computer Chip Transmits Data With Light
光导芯片
Researchers designed a chip that transfers data not with electrons but with photons—resulting in a potential 10-fold boost in speed. Christopher Intagliata reports.
研究人员设计了一种使用光子而不是电子传输数据的芯片，这可使传输速度提升10倍。
撰文/播音 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）
翻译 Meatle
审校 邰伦玥
Computer chips have two important parts—the logic on the chip, which computes and executes programs. Then there’s the part that sends and receives—gets data to crunch, sends back the answer. And while that first part, chip logic, has gotten much faster over the years, the transmission part has lagged behind. Because data gets sent via electrical signals passing through copper.
计算机芯片有两个重要的组成部分：用于计算与执行的芯片逻辑；用于收发数据的传输结构，它将需要处理的数据传入，并在芯片逻辑处理后输出结果。多年以来，计算机芯片的第一部分，芯片逻辑，已经突飞猛进，而传输结构则被远远的甩在后面。因为信号只通过铜片上的电信号进行传输。
So researchers designed a chip that exchanges data with light instead. "By going into optics, we're able to relieve this fundamental bottleneck of copper, and in doing so we're able to increase the bandwidth density on the chip, so how fast the chip can take data in and out, by an order of magnitude." Chen Sun, a computer hardware researcher at UC Berkeley, and the startup Ayar Labs.
因此研究人员设计了一种采用光来传输信号的芯片。“利用光学，我们能跳过导电体的天然瓶颈，研发出具有更大带宽的芯片。这些种改进所带来的传输速度提升，可以数量级计算。”孙晨(音译，Chen Sun)，伯克利大学与Ayar Labs的硬件研究员。
A metal pin on the memory chip in your computer might transmit at 1.6 gigabits per second. Sun's optical connection ups that rate to 2.5 gigabits per second. Not a huge difference on the face of it. But the killer app here is that multiple wavelengths of light—up to 11—can be used simultaneously to send data through a single fiber. Which means this technology has potential speeds of 27.5 gigabits per second—more than an order of magnitude faster than today’s standard. "So that's the extra dimension we have to scale bandwidth that we don't have with normal electrical signals." The findings appear in the journal Nature. [Chen Sun et al, Single-chip microprocessor communicating directly using light]
计算机上的一个针脚的传输速率可以达到1.6 Gb/s。孙的光学传输将这个速率提升到2.5 Gb/s。单这样看没有太大的差别，然而，光学传输的杀手锏是，它可以使用不同的波长进行传输：多达11种不同波长的光信号可以同时在单根光纤中传输。换句话说，这种技术可使传输速率达到27.5Gb/s，较现有的标准快了不止一个数量级。“所以，这种技术提供了另一种维度去衡量带宽，这是电传输并不具有的。”这项发现发表在《自然》上。
These chips with optical connections are not just high-speed—they also require less energy than the copper versions. That could be a big deal, with server farms projected to outpace every other commercial use of electricity within the next decade. Going optical could thus be a win-win: faster processing using a fraction of the energy.
这些光信号传输的芯片不单单具有更高的传输速率，它们同样更为节能。在将来的10年中，服务器机房的电耗预料将超过其他商业行为的电耗。这种技术的应用，将带来巨大的好处。因而使用光学传输将会是一个双赢的抉择：同样的能耗，传输更多的数据。
京ICP备11000850号-1 
京公网安备11010502039775号
信息网络传播视听节目许可证0111611号
国家科技基础条件平台
© 2011- 版权所有：中国数字科技馆 未经书面许可任何人不得复制或镜像
京公网安备11010502039775号 
