Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Dopefish on Thursday February 27 2014, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the super-fast-downloads-of-animated-gifs dept.
visaris writes "Phys.org reports researchers at IBM have set a new record for data transmission over a multi-mode optical fiber. The record data rate of 64Gb/s was achieved over a cable 57 meters long, using non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation with a type of laser called a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). Researcher Dan Kuchta notes, "Others have thought that this modulation wouldn't allow for transfer rates much faster than 32 Gb/s." Indeed, many researchers thought that achieving higher transmission rates would require turning to more complex types of modulation, such as pulse-amplitude modulation-4 (PAM-4). The achievement demonstrates that standard, existing technology for sending data over short distances should be able to meet the growing needs of servers, data centers and supercomputers through the end of this decade, according to the researchers. "What we're showing is that [...] this technology has at least one or two more generations of product life in it," says Kuchta."
 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by chebucto on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:52PM

    by chebucto (36) on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:52PM (#7945) Journal

    I was surprised to see IBM's name in a fiber-speed-record article, but it makes sense given their business in supercomputing.

    One stupid question: how are speeds this fast used? 32GB/s is faster that a lot of RAM, so I doubt it's for sending files to disk. Is this for CPUs to communicate directly with each other & each other's RAM?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Interesting=4, Total=4
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by visaris on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:56PM

    by visaris (2041) on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:56PM (#7947) Journal
    "Is this for CPUs to communicate directly with each other & each other's RAM?"

    This is common in HPC. All the new interconnects support one-sided communication. So, one node can RDMA into another node's memory without involving either of the nodes' CPUs much.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday February 27 2014, @10:34PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday February 27 2014, @10:34PM (#8150)

    If it's too fast for your RAM... you put more RAM in parallel.

    More seriously, 400G Ethernet (on single-mode fiber) is becoming a reality, 100G is becoming widely deployed (for big backbones).
    ASICs have been able to run that kind of speeds for a while, FPGAs for the last couple years. 32G is peanuts in the datacom R&D world (don't expect to afford it any time soon)

  • (Score: 1) by cafebabe on Monday March 03 2014, @03:56PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Monday March 03 2014, @03:56PM (#10088) Journal

    Is this for CPUs to communicate directly with each other & each other's RAM?

    Yep. Checking a neighbor's RAM is quicker than checking your own harddisk.

    --
    1702845791×2