Envying Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 IBM's No Optical Illusion - By Jack UldrichMarch 26, 2007 At the Optical Fiber Conference on Monday, IBM (NYSE: IBM) researchers unveiled a prototype optical chipset that they claim will allow high-definition movies -- which currently can take 30 minutes or more to download -- to be transferred in a single second. The technology is still 18 to 30 months from reaching the market, but advances like these made IBM my selection as the best blue chip of 2007, as well as the best tech stock of the year?. The new chip's clock speed has been estimated at 160 gigabits, or 160 billion bits of information. Beyond allowing users to download Will Ferrell's latest movie in a blink of an eye, the technology also offers a peek into an exciting new era of high-speed connectivity. Everything from communications and computing to entertainment and modern medicine could be radically transformed. Digital data would no longer hit the bottleneck of copper wires. Among other things, this means digital X-rays could be zapped directly to a doctor's hand-held screen; oil engineers could review seismic analysis of promising oilfields on a real-time basis; and home entertainment networks would seamlessly and efficiently transfer movies and music among televisions, computers, and hand-held devices. In the short term, these optical chipsets are likely to find a home in supercomputers, as well as the thousands of microprocessors that companies such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) are using at their massive data server farms. The new chip will greatly reduce the amount of energy needed to both power and air-condition these energy-draining systems. IBM is not alone in the field. I have written about Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) work in the field of silicon photonics, but today's demonstration suggests that IBM's advance is not just a lab-room curiosity. It is a functioning technology that could be contributing products and profits in the next two to three years. Such a timeline may be a little long for short-term investors, but for those with a more patient outlook, today's news offers further evidence that IBM's prospects are not an optical illusion: The company is a solid, long-term investment. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 haha imagine what this could do for pirates! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/#findComment-333199 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferret-Simpson Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 You know, as a roit pro'er geek loik, Oi'm dra'in a bi' o' a parrerrlel wiv dat tv fing, stardoor or wotever. Anybody who pays any attention to SG1 and Atlantis will know that in the Stargate Universe, Humans are the only advanced species to still use electronics. The Asgard(Deceased), Nox, Tollan (deceased), Alterran (Deceased), Ori, Goa'uld, Tok'ra, etc all use optical technology. Thus, I find the development of optical processing to be quite entertaining. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/#findComment-333350 Share on other sites More sharing options...
hecker Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 Anybody who pays any attention to SG1 and Atlantis will know that in the Stargate Universe, Humans are the only advanced species to still use electronics. The Asgard(Deceased), Nox, Tollan (deceased), Alterran (Deceased), Ori, Goa'uld, Tok'ra, etc all use optical technology. Thus, I find the development of optical processing to be quite entertaining. Geek Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/#findComment-333406 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zulu.Walker Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 It's about time. Now if they could offer it to residential users at a competitive price, it should take off. But we're prolly gonna wait for it for a couple of years. All that's left is optical 3d storage. We just can't store enough on magneto-optical devices to enjoy the bandwidth that this technology will bring us Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/#findComment-333468 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian Fogge Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 Hey, the Asguard are only deceased in the UK! They aren't scheduled to die until June 15 everywhere else on Earth. Sure it is one of those "will have going to have happened" happends, but it hasn't actually "happened" happend yet, actually. You can say your "Poppycock. It is have happend, will have going to be happening, was likely an event that should take place in the future!" all you want, but for the time being I am covering my ears and humming quite loudly. Back on topic, exciting stuff. Too bad that the typical end-user consumer will not be seeing something like this for a good decade or so. I mean, really. Why are most residential internet providers capping everything off at 8Mbps/1Mbps? Sure, there are the odd-ball ones that offer much higher stuff but only in limited areas. Not like you can actually move data across your home network that fast as your hard disks would have trouble keeping up even at 1Gbps. For the most part, this is something that should really only excite MAJOR ISPs offering service to a city or county. If you are truly excited about how this will improve your life in the short term and you are not a Datacenter Networking Engineer, then you have some severely messed up priorities at the moment. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/46548-ibms-no-optical-illusion-is-this-for-real/#findComment-333542 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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