This year DARPA funded some very interesting and expensive projects, maybe because this year they are celebrating their jubilee. Now, their money are pointed towards Sun Microsystems which are trying to replace the wiring between chips with laser beams. Too hard? Yeah, but with $44 million in their pockets they should be able to complete the research.

Sun’s technology which is based on silicon photonics, should make the next generation computer much faster and energy efficient. This is a five-year project but DARPA and Sun Microsystems are aware that there is “a 50 percent chance of failure, but if we win we can have as much as a thousand times increase in performance.” Until they finish spending that amount of money, we will have to content with computers working at snail’s pace.

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