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University of Illinois engineering team. From left to right: postdoctoral researcher Tan Fei, graduate student Wu Mengkai and Michelle Liu, the front is the head of the development of this technology, Professor Milton Fung. The new technology developed by Prof. Feng’s team has reached a transmission rate of 40G per second, which is the highest in the United States.
According to the website of a physicist organization, high-speed communication technology has taken a big step forward. Recently, a research group at the University of Illinois has made important progress in laser communication technology, and can transfer data through fiber optic systems at high speed and accuracy. The speed reaches 40G per second, which is the highest speed record in the United States.
The team members who achieved this result were led by Prof. Milton Feng, who is Professor of Electronics and Computer Engineering at the university's “Nick Holonjakâ€. Other members include postdoctoral researcher Tan Fei ( Fei Tan), as well as graduate students Mong-Kai Wu and Michael Liu. The research group published their relevant research results in the Institute of Photonics Technology and Communications (IEEE) magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
As computer technology advances to the petaflop and even higher levels, the processor speed has exceeded the transmission speed, which creates a technical bottleneck in the application area and hinders the further development of the application. Anyone who has tried dial-up networking to watch streaming video has its own experience, and even faster processors cannot increase file loading speed. In today's big data and cloud computing, there is a lot of information interaction between servers.
A laser device: Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be used to transmit data at high speed in fiber optic networks. It can transfer a larger amount of data faster than traditional cable systems. Professor Feng said: "VCSEL is the current industry standard. Today all optical interfaces are using this technology. The world's competition in this area is mainly to find ways to improve its speed and efficiency. And we achieved this in the United States. Maximum transmission speed."
How fast is this transmission speed? For comparison, the speed of a home high-speed network can reach approximately 100M per second, and Professor Feng's team achieved a speed of 40G per second, which is 400 times faster than the former. Due to its small size, this VCSEL device also has high energy efficiency - it is 100 times more energy efficient than conventional wires. At the same time, however, the accuracy of the transmitted data is also very high, and no errors were detected during up to one hour of operation.
High-speed and accurate data transmission is the key to creating personalized medicine, cloud computing, and many other applications. For example, in order to use the supercomputer's high-speed computing power to service customized healthcare, it is first necessary to collect medical data from the patient. But the data itself is useless, and it needs to be analyzed first. The data must then be sent from the lab to the computer facility. The computer then analyzes the data before forwarding it to the patient's attending physician to help develop the treatment plan.
Professor Feng said: "If you can not transmit information, then this information will be useless. If you can not transmit data, then you are spam, so data transmission technology is essential. High-speed data transmission will help remote computing, The better development of telemedicine and distance education. It all depends on how quickly you can transfer data."
The VCSELs used by the University of Illinois research team were working at room temperature, so the next step will be to find ways to make this device suitable for future work in the data center's high temperature environment.
Professor Feng believes that eventually researchers will be able to increase the speed of data transmission based on VCSEL equipment to 60G per second, but after that, due to the limitations of the material itself, the space for improvement will be very limited. However, he himself is not worried about the situation after approaching the limits of VCSEL technology. As early as 2004, Prof. Feng and Professor Prof. Holoniak have developed a new method that does not require VCSEL devices: transistor lasers. (morning)
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