IBM’s new nano device promises energy efficient extremely fast computers
Today computer chips use tiny copper wires to convey information. IBM has created nano silicon optical wires to replace the copper ones. Light rather than electricity is used to send information. Using silicon and light will significantly lower energy requirements as well as increase the speed at which computers process information.
The experimental device created by IBM is called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector (NAP). It “explores the ‘avalanche effect’ in Germanium, a material currently used in production of microprocessor chips.” The avalanche effect is created when a photon knocks free an electron that then knocks two more electrons free, they knock more electrons free and so forth, amplifying the original signal many times. Previous avalanche photodectors weren’t able to detect the fast light signals.
“This invention brings the vision of on-chip optical interconnections much closer to reality,” said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science and Technology, IBM Research. “With optical communications embedded into the processor chips, the prospect of building power-efficient computer systems with performance at the Exaflop level might not be a very distant future.
The NAP can receive “optical light signals “at 40Gbps (billion bits per second) and simultaneously multiply them tenfold.” To put this in perspective, current hard drives exchange information at 3Gps. Besides increasing the speed of information flow, the NAP requires very little electricity to run. Other avalanche photodectors require between 20-30V power supplies. The NAP only uses a 1.5V power supply.
This dramatic improvement in performance is the result of manipulating the optical and electrical properties at the scale of just a few tens of atoms to achieve performance well beyond accepted boundaries,” said Dr. Assefa…
Even better NAPs are made using the same materials found in computer chips, Silicon and Germanium. They also use “standard processes used in chip manufacturing” so the infrastructure to create these devices is already in place.
IBM scientists. Solomon Assefa, Fengnian Xia, and Yurii Vlasov of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., published their findings in the article, “Reinventing Germanium Avalanche Photodetector for Nanophotonic On-chip Optical Interconnects,” in the March 2010 issue of the scientific journal Nature.
Faster more energy efficient computers are on their way. When exactly these computers will be built and what the cost might be, are not known. More than likely the new technology will be used first in servers for use at research centers and large corporations. Most of us will have to wait for it to come down to personal computers.
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