Switch on chip to boost internet speed

The switch takes only one picosecond to "change tracks", meaning that it can switch on and off at a rate of one million million times per second.

clipped from www.abc.net.au Anna Salleh A new ultrafast optical switch on a chip could help speed up Australian internet by more than 6000%, say researchers. Professor Benjamin Eggleton from the University of Sydney and colleagues will present their research at the Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference "This is a switch that's 64 times faster than anything that's happening in Telstra's networks," says Eggleton director of the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems. It replaces electrical switches that are used to convert optical signals to a spread of electrical signals that are then redirected to various destinations. "We can create switches that are instantaneous, essentially," says Eggleton. "You just can't switch that fast with electronics." The optical switch consists of a specially-designed thumbnail-sized piece of glass wafer with wires etched into it. The researchers have demonstrated the switch can split a 640 Gigabit per second signal into 64 separate 10 Gigabit per second signals.