Saturday, July 12, 2008
thats fast
A new ultrafast optical switch on a chip could help speed up the internet in Australia by more than 6,000 per cent, say researchers from the University of Sydney. The researchers say that the new chips will increase switching to 64 times faster than anything that's happening in Telstra's networks. The optical switch apparently will eliminate of one of the bottlenecks in Australia's internet infrastructure.
Essentially the new switch replaces electrical switches that are used to convert optical signals to a spread of electrical signals that are then redirected to various destinations.
The optical switch consists of a specially-designed thumbnail-sized piece of glass wafer with wires etched into it. If you think of the internet as a big rail network and this switch as the points it means it can direct traffic onto diffierent rails in only pico seconds meaning that it can switch on and off at a rate of one million million times per second.
Essentially the new switch replaces electrical switches that are used to convert optical signals to a spread of electrical signals that are then redirected to various destinations.
The optical switch consists of a specially-designed thumbnail-sized piece of glass wafer with wires etched into it. If you think of the internet as a big rail network and this switch as the points it means it can direct traffic onto diffierent rails in only pico seconds meaning that it can switch on and off at a rate of one million million times per second.
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 6:46 AM 
