Welcome the plastic chip
- TAGS:100 Gbit, heterocyclic polymer, platic chips, Third-Order Nano
- IT TOPICS:Data Center, Emerging Technology, Hardware, Internet, Networking
Hal Bennet, CEO for Third-Order Nano Inc. in Wilmington, Del., says that his company has proven in the lab that its "heterocyclic polymer"-based technology can "switch light" at speeds as high as 100 Gbits/sec. In other words, if the lab work can make it to the real world, in a few years you'll be buying blazingly fast network gear whose core intelligence runs on plastic. Although he acknowledges that many other vendors "have cried wolf in the past about polymer technology," Bennet claims Third-Order Nano will demonstrate the real thing in Q2 of 2008. Why is this a big deal? According to Bennet, "silicon peters out at 10G Ethernet" and to get to higher data rates you need advanced microprocessor technology, such as gallium arsenide, which is far more expensive and less flexible to design into products than today's silicon or, potentially tomorrow's, polymer chips. He adds that a polymer-based Internet infrastructure would boost bandwidth by one thousand times, but it shouldn't cost a nickel more. "It'll be a gigabit spigot for thirty bucks a month," he predicts. That would be wonderful, of course, so long as "heterocyclic polymer" is not just a technical term for "wolf."
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