Laser chips increase computer speed to petaflop levels

Japanese electronics firm NEC hopes the chip of light with a transmission rate of up to 25 Gb / s through fiber optics and the ability to handle a million billion calculations per second ( 1 petaflop = 1,000 teraflops ) will help them regain those What has been lost to IBM.

NEC used to be the world's most powerful supercomputer company Earth Simulator from 2002 to 2004. But now, the champion system is IBM BlueGene, operating at 360 teraflops (360 trillion calculations per second). , just over a third of petaflop.

NEC has developed the VCSEL ( Vertical-Cavity Surface Emitting Laser ) chip that converts electric current into light pulses and transmits it through fiber optic cables. It helps to limit delays that often occur in copper wire connections. Moreover, when moving further and further away, the electric current will decrease more strongly than the degradation of light.

VCSEL chips will soon be equipped for a number of high-end applications, requiring strong processing capabilities. However, this technology will take another 10 years to appear in the desktop system. " The transfer rate of 25 Gb / sec provides many development opportunities for supercomputers, but it is far from possible to be present in real products, " said John Shalf, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Research Center. National Laboratory (USA), said.

Shalf's colleague Horst Simon also said that there would be many problems affecting the progress of the new generation supercomputer: " A petaflop-level system needs at least 200 terabytes of memory, not including construction. Building energy sources and cooling technology for such a computer will also be major challenges . "