A team of scientists from universities in Denmark, Sweden, and Japan has found that a single chip can successfully transfer more than one petabit of data per second. This is more than one million gigabits of data per second over a fiber-optic cable, which is essentially the traffic of the entire Internet.

Researchers-A. A. Jørgensen, D. Kong, L. K. Oxenløwe and their team successfully transmitted 1.84 petabits of data over 7.9 km of fiber-optic cable using only one chip. While this falls short of other alternatives using larger, bulkier systems that have reached up to 10.66 petabits, the key here is scale, and the proposed system is very compact. [By dividing the data stream into 37 sections, one for each core of the fiber optic cable, and further dividing those streams into 223 channels each, the researchers were able to significantly eliminate interference that would otherwise slow down the optical system. [We can say that the average Internet traffic in the world is about one petabit per second. We transmit twice that," Jorgensen said in a commentary in New Scientist (opens in new tab). We are sending twice that," Jorgensen said in comments in New Scientist (opens in new tab). This shows that Internet connectivity can take us much farther than we can go today. [The researchers also theorize that such a system could support speeds of up to 100 petabits per second in massively parallel systems. [This research paper (open in new tab) is part of a multi The paper relies on a series of investigations into the concept of single-chip solutions by several researchers, including a paper called "Ultra-dense optical data transmission over standard fibre with a single chip source" by Australian researchers. Catchy.

Essentially, high-speed data transmission, which often requires fiber optic cables and bulky equipment, is now being miniaturized into small on-chip packages. Instead of using multiple lasers in parallel, they can be miniaturized to the silicon level. This would also remove the difficulties in transmitting large data packages over long distances and at high speeds.

A large part of these new breakthroughs are microcoms. Not only are these useful for shrinking the requirements of such systems, but when added to CMOS chips have seen breakthroughs recently (open in new tab).

In fact, Jorgensen says, more can be added to CMOS chips to further integrate this entire system. In other words, even if it looks fast and compact now, it is only a matter of time before a more integrated, faster version is developed. Stacking more devices into a single parallel system would provide mega-bandwidth from a single server rack.

Basically, the Internet still has room to grow.