Bringing light to computers

IBM research could bring the speed of fiber-optic networks to the chips inside personal computers.

Researchers at IBM recently announced a nanoscale silicon switch that can direct trillions of bits of data per second within an optical network. The switch could make it possible to incorporate the speed and bandwidth of a telecommunications network into a personal computer, say the researchers. This is an increasingly important goal for engineers as they look for the best design for future multicore machines--computers with more than one processing center.

Read full story at Technology Review.