back to article Boffins shatter data transmission speed record

European scientists claim to have achieved a data transmission speed of 1.8 petabits per second, all with a single laser and an optical chip.  For those unsure, 1.8Pbit/s is a lot. As in, more than the total volume of global internet traffic sent every second, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) said in a statement. The …

  1. sitta_europea Silver badge

    "...Each colour corresponds to a different frequency..."

    Kindalike, er, radio then?

    1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      More like a modem...

      you know, those screaming devices which nowadays, in its DSL variant, scream at thousands of frequencies at the same time.

      But this time with colors of light.

      1. chivo243 Silver badge
        Go

        Re: More like a modem...

        What about the colors on the wires? White Blue, Blue, White Orange, Brown, White Green etc... surely they must carry the correct colors???

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: More like a modem...

          That's the tricky bit. Getting an electrician who can tell the difference between the 532.0nm and 532.001nm green wires

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Windows

            Re: More like a modem...

            They may need a magnifying glass with a graduated scale. And a year or so of training on how to use it :-)

        2. spireite Silver badge

          Re: More like a modem...

          Which is Live, Neutral and Ground?

        3. Neil Barnes Silver badge
          Holmes

          Re: More like a modem...

          So the old 'bog brown slate' becomes bog brown slate, slightly danker bog brown slate, danker still...?

          Obviously a magnifying glass will be required --->

    2. MiguelC Silver badge

      "...Each colour corresponds to a different frequency..."

      Yes, kind a like physics

      OMG, they invented PHYSICS!!!

  2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    It is not "Technical University of Denmark"

    For the life of Brian: It is "Denmark Technical University"!

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: It is not "Technical University of Denmark"

      The Wikipedia has it like this:

      "The Technical University of Denmark (Danish: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ranked among Europe's leading engineering institutions."

      "From 1933, the institution was officially known as Danmarks tekniske Højskole (DtH), which commonly was translated into English, as the 'Technical University of Denmark'."

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_University_of_Denmark

  3. Paul Crawford Silver badge

    Wow, that breaks the megawrist barrier by some margin!

    Updating from https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/23/pipe_the_fattening/ to allow for compressed HD video at 5 Mbit/sec you it could satisfy 360 million onanists simultaneously. I will leave the lubrication feed requirements as an exercise for the reader.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      OK, I won't be pedantic and mention multicast as I love that translation :).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Neat, how small is it?

    Because it would be interesting to see if this will be an obvious add to the silicon photonics stuff that Intel has been too busy putting out fab yield issue fires to do much interesting stuff with recently.

    Sounds like a way to get a large boost to on-box optical SerDes as well if both can be fabbed at the same time. Good to know there may be something interesting to look forward to in a decade or so. (Just like 3d stacked chip fab teasers in years gone by).

  5. Paul Herber Silver badge

    '1.8 petabits per second'

    Yes, well, that reminds me of the time when I had a problem getting the built-in serial port on an 8048 family chip to work over 1km of twisted pair at 300b/s.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      > serial port on an 8048 family chip to work

      Somehow I'm picturing a farmer taking his son out to the barn, pulling this dust sheets off a 8048 and saying- here son, you can take the family chip out for a spin

  6. Denarius
    Trollface

    finally

    nearly enough capacity for the interwebs to carry all the POS insecure IOT, spammers, snoops and of course, javascript. Browsers will be unable to be used for information as all the snoopware code, logging, monitoring, malvertising, advertising code runs and reports. A few pointless, rehashed, badly acted, sermonising repeats of some 60 year old cartoon or movie will add to the toxic mess. Sort of makes me wish the snoopers demanding backdoors get their wish. Petabytes of watchers watching each other, badly. And DOS storms, Buy spinning rust purveyors shares, I see a new internet gold rush coming.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All the cat videos in 1 second?

    What will I do after that?

    1. Kurgan

      Re: All the cat videos in 1 second?

      PORN

      1. aks

        Re: All the cat videos in 1 second?

        Cat porn?

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: All the cat videos in 1 second?

          I believe that pussy features extensively in said videos. Allegedly.

    2. TaabuTheCat

      Re: All the cat videos in 1 second?

      "What will I do after that?"

      Use the laser to tease the cat.

  8. MiguelC Silver badge
    Trollface

    "(...) 319Tbps – less than a third the speed of the DTU experiment."

    Well, yes, indeed it is less than a third. Also less than a quarter and less than a fifth. *BUT* it's a bit more than a sixth. Wouldn't that be the better comparative?

    (icon: Troll or pedant, troll or pedant... these are the kind of difficult decisions in life one must make)

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    100Pbps ?

    Okay, if 1.8Pbps is more than all Internet traffic today, and knowing that the natural effect of having more of something is that you use it up, what is an Internet with 100Pbps goint to look like ?

    Are we going to have petabytes of cat videos in VR ?

  10. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Another consideration

    "Oxenløwe said the system could also greatly reduce the energy footprint of the internet since just a single laser would be needed in place of "hundreds of thousands of the lasers located at internet hubs and datacenters"

    And create a massively significant single point of failure?

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Another consideration

      Come now, we know the world only needs maybe 5 lasers.

  11. Slx

    Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

    I have to say these boffins are great. They’re always solving everything and coming up with excellent new solutions to things.

    Where do they live, what do they eat and what are their mating habits? David Attenborough could do a wonderful documentary.

    Honestly, just find it odd for a tech site to use headlines that belong in a British tabloid. It’s one stop short of calling engineers “a bunch of geeks.”

    1. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Re: Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

      I used to work as an engineer on scientific projects, and was proud to be granted the title of "boffin" by them sometimes. It was an acknowledgement of being part of the intellectual community as opposed to being a mere "technician".

    2. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

      Where do they live, what do they eat and what are their mating habits?

      In flats mostly. Pizza. Very few.

    3. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

      > Honestly, just find it odd for a tech site to use headlines that belong in a British tabloid

      You did notice the big red banner at the top of the page? And all the muttering that El Reg really isn't its proper self without the .co.uk?

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Linux

        Re: Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

        I'd be delighted to be referred to as a boffin - as would just about any (even slightly) tech-y Englander.

    4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Are boffins sort of like puffins who can solve tech things?

      Honestly, just find it odd for a tech site to use headlines that belong in a British tabloid. It’s one stop short of calling engineers “a bunch of geeks.”

      Seriously? You signed up as a commentard back in June 2010, and possibly were reading the site for a some while before then, and you STILL don't get the "house style"? And you managed to miss the many articles using the word "boffin" where someone else made the comments and had to have it explained to them?

  12. ravenviz Silver badge

    We will definitely break the Universe one day.

    1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      I hope so. These travel restrictions are awful and have gone on too long. Just getting to our own moon is pretty much a nation-scale project. Forget about going to any of those sparkling destinations in the sky in your lifetime.

  13. that one in the corner Silver badge

    1.8Pbit/s - that can be filled easily

    Sod the cat videos, get this rolled out to the astronomers so we can have even better and bigger baseline interferometers!

  14. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    cool, so price drop

    cool, so will we see any price drops?

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: cool, so price drop

      /s tag is not even required for your post.

      Well played.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: cool, so price drop

      Don't be silly! The price is what you have to pay and bears no relationship whatsoever to the cost of supply.

  15. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Facepalm

    With those teeth

    It's not surprising the pet... ahh... bites

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have a question

    How much information is there? I mean, I know that the internet has led to the creation of a load of extra traffic which isn't actually true, but my Gb internets can deliver more stuff than I can consume.

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: I have a question

      It will lead to the M25 effect for data (build a high capacity relief road and it doesn't relieve traffic as much as generate entirely new stuff).

  17. Roland6 Silver badge

    the transmission managed to hit 1.84Pbps over 7.9km (4.9 miles) of fiber line

    More than sufficient for datacenter application; just because its fibre doesn't mean it has to be able to go large distances.

    Only thing missing is details on the type of fibre line being used and its connectors.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: the transmission managed to hit 1.84Pbps over 7.9km (4.9 miles) of fiber line

      "Only thing missing is details on the type of fibre line being used and its connectors."

      ...and what hardware is at the receiving and whether it can cope with routing the data at that speed :-)

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Next step.

    Looking at this story, it mentions a lot about transmitting this huge amount of data. Maybe the next thing they should work on is a receiver for it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Next step.

      Someone thick down voted that.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: Next step.

        As one with a name instead of a worthless AC using "AC" to post stupid nonsense: How dumb can you be to believe that there would be no receiver? "Transmit" means send AND receive. Therefore I down voted you.

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