Sun splits DARPA photon-linkage cake with Kotura

Kotura Inc announced today it has been awarded a $14m contract by Sun Microsystems, to assist with photonic linking of processor cores in future supercomputers and power-limited multicore systems. Sun is carrying out the optical core-hookup work for the US military. The idea of linking processors optically rather than …

[Steven Knox]

Surely...

they should power the chips this way as well, leading to Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Voltage And Communications (UNIVAC)?

[Christopher E. Stith]

other uses

Small, fast computers that are very efficient are also ideal for augmented soldier contraptions and battlefield robots. The flying video surveillance bat especially, but medic bots and mine clearing bots, too.

[TeeCee]

Optical computer quote.

Oo! I can see my other processors from here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Sun was getting out of the chip business

Opensource, Java, Solaris, who needs hardware

this is a funny site I found while searching for Sun's rock chip

www.sunsucks.com

[Tom]

TeeCee...

That was so poor you made my dog cry :(

Even "I can see the BUS is running behind again"...

Would've been better.

[mvrx]

What the heck is DARPA doing funding Sun? IBM is....

SUN? They have no hope in the processor world. IBM is miles ahead on on-chip optical interconnects. Last I read they also got funding from DARPA and were producing some pretty incredible optical results.

This sounds like another deal made with a senator on a golf course instead of by tech heads who have a clue.

[Victor]

DARPA and Sun

Maybe IBM's solution was not as good as Sun's and because of that, they got the funding?...

who said Sun is quitting chips business?.. opensource, java, solaris... that's only software... IBM does hardware and software too... doing one doesn't imply leaving the other... your logic fails