

This 'small scratch' can make Internet 60 times faster - nreece
http://www.rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?docpath=//money/2008/jul/10net.htm

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sanj
Holy Orders of Magnitude, Batman!

"except this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks."

picosecond = one millionth of one millionth of a second (0.000 000 000 001
seconds)

"This means that in one second the switch is turning on and off about one
million times."

Huh? I thought it only took a picosecond!

~~~
Retric
Time to switch is only part of the question you also need to send the data. If
I where building a switch I would delay decoding the packet and just send the
even packet's to one location and the odd packets to another and so you can
double the time each location has to deal with a packet before it's got to
decode the next one.

Edit: and keep subdividing the packets like this until you can use fairly
cheep processors to handle the load.

~~~
sanj
Except that the next sentence talks about terabit capacity, which does require
picosecond switching.

~~~
Retric
I don't think we are talking about the same thing, 1 picosecond * the speed of
light = 0.2998 millimeters so a lightly longer cable and your packet is time
shifted a few picoseconds. Anyway, _The Switch 8800 has an impressive 1.44
Terabit-per-second backplane_ This does not mean it can route 1.44 trillion
packets per second even if it can handle that many bits.

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shawndrost
>sciencey_words/actual_content

ERR: Divide by 0.

~~~
ovi256
Yeah, the article is a perfect example of what I call lolscience.

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wallflower
A little more content, still looking..

All-optical switching! Echoes of HAL2000.

[http://www.cudos.org.au/cudos/news/Jan08OpticsPhotonicsNews....](http://www.cudos.org.au/cudos/news/Jan08OpticsPhotonicsNews.pdf)

~~~
wallflower
Found the paper!! Woohoo! Back to coding...

"Error-free 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing using a chalcogenide planar waveguide
chip" (small but tantalizing paper pg.8-9)

> We have demonstrated, for the first time, error-free 640-to-10 Gbit/s
> optical time-division demultiplexing with a chalcogenide waveguide.
> Excellent performance is achieved with only 2 dB average power penalty.

[http://www.iceaustralia.com/aos2008/pdf/PDPProceedingsfinal....](http://www.iceaustralia.com/aos2008/pdf/PDPProceedingsfinal.pdf)

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maw
It doesn't take much to get way faster than Telstra's network.

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TweedHeads
Patents and lawyers will never let it see daylight.

Or they will make our asses bleed to pay for it.

~~~
hugh
What, exactly, are you basing that on?

Do you know of any patents which cover this particular area of innovation, or
is that just your default response to any invention?

~~~
jrockway
I think he thinks this site is Reddit, where you get instant mega-karma for
saying anything cynical.

Of course, the way to get karma here is to say something negative about Reddit
:)

