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Metal Replacement Electrical & Electronics
Researchers have developed a data transfer system that can transmit information 10 times faster than a USB. The new link pairs high-frequency silicon chips with a polymer cable as thin as a strand of hair. The system may one day boost energy efficiency in data centers and lighten the loads of electronics-rich spacecraft.
The lead author is Jack Holloway, PhD, MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and co-authors include Ruonan Han, associate professor and Holloway’s PhD adviser in EECS, and Georgios Dogiamis, a senior researcher at Intel.
New Link with Benefits of Copper and Fiber Optics Conduits
The team’s new link draws on benefits of both copper and fiber optic conduits, while ditching their drawbacks. “
It’s a great example of a complementary solution,” says Dogiamis. Their conduit is made of plastic polymer, so it is lighter and potentially cheaper to manufacture than traditional copper cables. But when the polymer link is operated with sub-terahertz electromagnetic signals, it is far more energy-efficient than copper in transmitting a high data load. The new link’s efficiency rivals that of fiber-optic but has a key advantage, “
It’s compatible directly with silicon chips, without any special manufacturing,” says Holloway.
The team engineered such low-cost chips to pair with the polymer conduit. Typically, silicon chips struggle to operate at sub-terahertz frequencies. Yet the team’s new chips generate those high-frequency signals with enough power to transmit data directly into the conduit. That clean connection from the silicon chips to the conduit means the overall system can be manufactured with standard, cost-effective methods, the researchers say.
Super Tiny Link, Like a Strand of Hair
The new link also beats out copper and fiber optic in terms of size. “
The cross-sectional area of our cable is 0.4 millimeters by a quarter millimeter,” says Han. “So, it’s super tiny, like a strand of hair.” Despite its slim size, it can carry a hefty load of data, since it sends signals over three different parallel channels, separated by frequency. The link’s total bandwidth is 105 gigabits per second, nearly an order of magnitude faster than a copper-based USB cable. Dogiamis says the cable could “
address the bandwidth challenges as we see this megatrend toward more and more data.”
Suitable for Data-dense Applications
In future work, researchers hope to make the polymer conduits even faster by bundling them together. “
Then the data rate will be off the charts,” Han says. “
It could be one terabit per second, still at low cost.”
The researchers suggest “data-dense” applications, like server farms, could be early adopters of the new links since they could dramatically cut data centers’ high energy demands. The link could also be a key solution for the aerospace and automotive industries, which place a premium on small, light devices.
And one day, the link could replace the consumer electronic cables in homes and offices, thanks to the link’s simplicity and speed. “
It’s far less costly than (copper or fiber optic) approaches, with significantly wider bandwidth and lower loss than conventional copper solutions,” says Holloway. “So, high fives all round.”
Source: MIT