IBM is as slow as light....

[sarettah]

http://news.zdnet.com/IBM+slows+ligh...feed&subj=zdnn

IBM has created a chip that can slow down light, the latest advance in an industrywide effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.


A number of companies and university researchers are currently tinkering with ways to replace the electronic components inside computers, which ferry signals with electrons, with optical technology. Optical equipment ferries data on photons, the smallest measure of light. Photons are far faster. More important, optical equipment generates less heat, curbing the growing problem of heat and power consumption.

The catch, however, is that until recently, creating optical components has been more of an art than a science. The components cost a lot to make and can't be cranked out in the millions like silicon chips. Another factor: Optical parts are typically big, unlike silicon chips, which measure only a few millimeters on a side.

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[Dale_Ryan]

Cool! And when will this be available?

[Inabon]

optic fiber technology will make it to computers soon. don´t worry too much about size it will be small sooner than you think.

[Dravyk]

It does seem very ironic to me. One would think we would want to break the speed of light and go faster, rather than slower.

Interestingly enough -- yin and yang -- what if in an odd way, experiments and techniques of today slowing light down, provide the foundation some decades in the future for reversing the procedure and creating faster-than-light drives.

[MorganGrayson]

I wonder if we can get one of these things and use it on the entire state of California. There might be my long wished for "dimmer" out there after all!