IBM’s New Optochip Transfers One Trillion Bits Per Second

By Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff

The Holey Optochip (Credit: IBM Research)

As Big Data increasingly becomes a part of our economy bandwidth becomes increasingly important. Not just wired or wireless bandwidth, either. When it comes to server racks and supercomputers, the internal bandwidth within a computer also matters a lot more.

IBM has made a big step forward in improving that bandwidth with their announcement today that they’ve developed a parallel optical transceiver – dubbed the “Holey Optochip” – that’s capable of transferring information at the rate of one trillion bits per second. That’s eight times faster than currently available optical components.

“We’re trying to deliver a component that looks like an electrical chip,” IBM researcher Clint Schow told me on the phone yesterday. “But it also had to be dense, compact, and power efficient. We were also focused on delivering it with components available today.”

IBM Paves The Way Towards Scalable Quantum Computing Alex Knapp Forbes Staff

For the prototype optochip, the IBM research team drilled 48 holes in a conventional 90nm CMOS chip, which then allowed for the placement of 24 receiver and 24 transmitter channels within the chip. Because it’s so compact, the chip is incredibly power efficient – it consumes less than five watts. And by using a standard CMOS chip, they’re able to bring the interconnects as close to the processors as possible, which allows for its incredible transfer speeds.

IBM’s next step will be to work with commercial partners to further refine and develop the chip. Even though the current iteration is only a prototype, Schow is confident that the development cycle for commercial applications will be short. That’s because all of the individual components of the chip are readily available, and the modifications can be performed without customized equipment.

“Part of the real advantage of this chip is that we put it together by using small tweaks in clever ways,” he said.

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Middle East Faces Tensions Between Online Child Protection and Internet Freedom

Larry Magid, ForbesContributor

Panelists talk about how to protect children without censoring the Internet in Qatar

I’m in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar for a two-day conference where representatives of government, non-profits and businesses from throughout the Middle East will join their counterparts from other regions to discuss “Promoting Online Safety and Cyber Ethics in the Middle East.” The conference is run by the Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) along with ICTQatar. Sponsors include Google, Microsoft and Vodaone.

Social media and Arab Spring

I came to moderate a panel on the impact of social networking where speakers from Facebook, Yahoo, Aljazeera and OfokSystem talked about the role social networks like Facebook and Twitter played in Arab spring. Although conditions on the ground in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries were responsible for the unrest, social networking provided a vehicle for protestors to spread the word and organize protests.  There was a general consensus among the speakers that the best path for governments going forward is to encourage openness and a free flow of information lest other leaders risk following in the footsteps of ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

David Gross

The conference’s opening sessions featured a discussion between FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam and  former U.S. ambassador David A. Gross, who took delegates on a walk down memory lane about the history of Internet regulation in the U.S. and Europe.

Balkam asked Gross to comment on the tension between the tendencies to want to protect children via Internet regulation and government imposed filtering vs. wanting to promote free speech.

“Every parent naturally as a matter of biology as well as intellect wants to protect children,” said Gross. “A lot of these issues are variations of an old theme with each country wanting to make its decisions in their own way based on their own culture.”

But what’s different is that kids are often more tech savvy than adults. “The extraordinary and maybe unprecedented twist is that technology and Internet related technology seems to be more intuitive for young people than the adults who are making the rules.”

Gross said that the Internet does not lend itself to being heavily regulated by government but instead “a more organic multi-stakeholder approach that includes government but also schools, parents, non-governmental organizations and corporations “coming together to field their way through it.”

Changes over time

Gross pointed out that the difference between the nineties and now “is that the issues are more complex,” thanks in part to cloud computing and the rise of international companies like Google and Microsoft.  Also, the discussion, which used to be between Europe and the U.S. is now “a conversation that is truly global which means that the complexities have gone up enormously. Instead of two players you now have 100+ players,” he said.

Recognizing cultural differences among countries, Gross does not advocate a one-size-fits all policy.  “Ultimately there are going to have to be accommodations and how these things get resolved will fundamentally determine the economic well being of many countries.” While this may seem daunting, he’s optimistic that it can be worked out. “With technology and clever policy making everyone will be able to live within their own set of rules.”

In the past, said Gross, “what your future would turn out to be depended mostly on who your parents were and where you were born but, because of the Internet, that is no longer the case.” Access is truly global and truly open, but the danger, he added,”is from those who will shut that down.”

The conference is being held in conjunction Qitcom 2012, a technology exhibition and conference that features technology companies from around the world seeking business opportunities in Qatar and neighboring states.  Forbes lists Qatar as the world’s richest country while the CIA World Fact book estimates Qatar’s per capita GDP at $102,700.

While Internet safety advocates and tech professionals were meeting at the FOSI and Qitcom events in one part of the city, eight heads of state from the Arab region, government ministers and Arab tech industry leaders were participating in the Connect Arab Summit to talk about expanding technology opportunities in the region.

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