Just read a really interesting article from a NY Times Blog on developments in HP BladeSystem taking place in our HP Labs. Imagine an optical mid plane for Blade servers i.e. no wires just lights; well it might not be as far away as you think - there is already a working prototype!!
Extract
H.P., Intel, I.B.M. and a small group of other companies have their researchers charging after a holy grail of sorts in data centers. They want to create commercial photonics systems that will replace wires as the principal means of moving data between computing systems and between the components in computing systems. An even more daring pursuit revolves around using light to control data on computer chips.
While the cost of such technology proves too great for mainstream use today, the researchers believe they can bring the price down and demonstrate incredible increases in networking performance through photonics. Such breakthroughs should prove crucial to keeping the overall performance of computers increasing at historical rates, since it’s the communications between things like memory, hard drives and processors that often limit hardware designers today.
During a recent visit to H.P.’s labs, I saw the fruits of Mr. Williams’ labor firsthand in the form of an optical mid-plane for blade servers. (I know, I know, it’s the stuff that dreams are made of.)
To read the full blog article click here
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/hps-hunk-of-burning-light/
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