I was recently observing that Fiber to the Home trials are under way – its a good step albeit many years late. Today Intel have decided to show off their new toy for the networking sector.

Silicon Optical Fiber its a system that uses the advantages of silicon production: cost and speed of production most notably with the speed and power of fiber.

This prototype network can run at 50Gbps and they have successfully been using it at 40Gbps with theoretical speeds of 1Tbps achievable.

Previously in optical networks, dedicated components were needed for the detection and initiation of the optical signal.

“Because silicon is translucent at infrared wavelengths, portions of a chip can be used to create waveguides, mirrors, prisms and other optical components, with Intel’s design of indium phosphide/silicon laser producing light that can be tuned by setting up different patterns of gratings on-chip.”

Intel Explains

The new technology is integrated at the silicon level which upon reaching mass production should prove to bring extremely fast networking down to very low costs. Likely this technology will become mainstream for wired networks in the near future. Future expansion could see this technology kick start moores law which has been seen to be failing lately, integrating high speed communications far in excess of current silicon is capable of at processor and circuit board levels.

Intel do have other Optical Based research projects on going this may be the first of many significant advancements in optical computer networks.

References
ZDNetUK
Intel

Created by Whitebunnywabbit

Not too many years ago many of us were sitting starting at our 56kbps modems wondering if this dial up was the one that would get us connected. I remember the day when broadband was finally rolled out to my village, I was hung over and slept through most of the event.

My freind’s dad worked with BT and he had informed me they had actually done the work weeks before but just had not got around to turning it on yet. How typical of BT. Well that day i was very excited at my first 512kbps connection it seemed unimaginablly fast.

Several years on and the technology has clearly improved, i now am sitting on one of Virgin’s 50Mbps cable connections, and like that first day of broadband, this too seems extremely fast in comparition to my previous connection, a Sky Max 20Mbps connection which acted more like 8Mbps!

It seems however no matter where I go I just cant get the optimal service, I moved here to a nice cable network area, and it turns out that not far away, they are testing out the 100Mbps service. The Virgin installer did hint to me that the trials were going well and they may be looking at rolling out nationally this year! Of course, now we’re looking at moving house so naturally i’ll undoubtedly end up outside the virgin network again.

Now I find that surveys, which may or may not be entirely trustworthy support rolling out fiber optical connections to the rural areas which once again means i’ll end up being the last one to get connected.

62 per cent of adults would like the UK government to deploy super-fast internet services in the countryside

This may be so but of that 62 per cent, how many came from the countryside, and how many of them were asked in a leading way? Would they have voted equally if the question had been reversed such that the question was in support of rolling out fiber to properties in big cities first?

Well no matter where I am, as long as I have broadband i’ll be happy. When we do move its likely to be on the edge of the city also so perhaps we will be lucky this time.

References

Top10.com

Created by Whitebunnywabbit