...technology in supercomputers, Vildibill said, but then it will "trickle down" into conventional business servers, which form Sun's main business.
Luxtera envisions future versions of its technology allowing data transfer on a single fibre-optic strand to reach 100Gbps, then 1Tbps, and eventually 10Tbps. The company is developing technology now that permits 10 wavelengths of light to be transferred simultaneously.
Luxtera will start shipping its first sample chips to customers in February 2006, said Gabriele Sartori, vice-president of marketing. Those models will use a single wavelength of light and will go into production a year later, he said.
Defense work
For now, Sun's goal is to build the Defense Department-funded technology prototypes. The work, to be completed by the end of 2006, is phase two of a plan called the High Performance Computing Systems program administered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Sun, Cray and IBM are vying to make it to phase three, the goal of which is to actually build a machine based on the prototypes. More than one company could be selected. Phase three had been expected to be done by 2009 or 2010, but now the machines it will fund are due to arrive by 2011.
Phase two will incorporate proximity communications and Luxtera's optoelectronic technology, but most is not likely to yield a full-fledged computer, Vildibill said. "I don't believe we'll have a fully functioning computer system prototype by end of phase two," he said.
Proximity communication itself could well arrive by 2008 or 2009, Sun has said.
Sun hopes its DARPA-funded machine will swing the supercomputer innovation pendulum back toward mammoth machines and away from "cluster" systems, in which many small, independent machines are connected with high-speed networks and a powerful switch. The ultimate hope is that data transfers across the system will have as close to the same speeds and delays as local chip-to-chip communications, Vildibill said.
"Ideally you'd want to see a one-to-one ratio," Vildibill said. "The trend in the industry is going the wrong way."
