IBM slows the speed of light

IN RESEARCH to enable a move from electrical to optical chips, Big Blue boffins have worked out a way to delay the flow of light.

Big Blue has been trying to develop optical chips because light can move data much faster. The downside is that light moves a bit fast to control and for the system to work properly it needs to be buffered.

Dr TC Chen, vice president of Science and Technology for IBM Research told apcstart.com that in the past, light was passed through optical fibres in order to delay it. However, this idea didn't work properly because, at the size of a Christmas tree, the light buffers were far too large to fit on a chip.

IBM boffins got around this problem by installing 'delay lines' on microchips, that were smaller than one square millimetre.

Chen says the development brings the integration of hundreds of these devices on one computer chip a bit closer. More here. µ