IBM's Silicon Photonics research group today published news of what it believes is a major breakthrough in increasing processor performance with multi-core processors. Instead of relying on typical copper wire connections between cores, the New York state-based firm has developed a unit it refers to as an electro-optic modulator. The device uses nanotechnology and a small laser to convert electrical signals into pulses of directed light that mimic the binary code of a processor. This hardware is 100 to 1,000 times smaller than the links used to join multiple cores today and could all but eliminate the large gaps between cores that limit their overall size, according to IBM.

The advancement could also result in a single-chip processor that exceeds the power of even the best supercomputers today, the company boasts. As many processors often use miles of large copper wiring to achieve the same effect, the technique could be combined with other advancements to place hundreds or thousands of cores on a single chip die, allowing a resulting CPU to process many tasks at once without bogging down due to size or the loss of performance associated with coordinating the actions of more than a few cores at once. The reduced heat associated with using light pulses instead of hot wiring would also reduce power consumption to the point where a supercomputer that needs the power of a large neighborhood could be shrunk to the same size and power demands of a notebook, IBM says.

The research group intends that the electro-optic modulator be used in production computers but has not provided a timetable for when regular users could expect to see the technology in shipping products, pointing to a release in the next few years rather than a short-term launch. IBM is expected to license the technology but may use it for its own POWER chips and for eventual successors to the Cell found in the PlayStation 3.