Every second, this chip transmits an internet's worth of data

The laser-powered chip could result in faster broadband speeds for consumers and an internet that uses less energy to operate

A power-hungry internet that uses less energy. High-performance computers on par with NASA's Broadband speeds are mind-boggling. According to Scandinavian researchers, this is a new potential reality. Researchers from universities in Sweden and Denmark said in a study that came out last week that they had used a laser-powered chip to send almost twice as much data as the internet through a fiber optic cable in one second. This is a world record.

According to material scientists, the chip achieved dizzying speeds by transmitting data over fiber optic cables using a single laser and a specialized light-creating device. The amount of data sent by the researchers, approximately 1.84 petabytes, far outnumbers the approximately 1 petabyte of data transmitted over the entire internet every second. (A petabyte is roughly a million gigabytes of data.) 

Experts believe that if the chip is commercialized, it will result in faster broadband speeds and more computing power for consumers. Most importantly, it would reduce how much energy is needed to run the internet, which uses about 10% of the world's electricity and is growing.

"The internet is a really, really large energy consumer," said Leif Katsuo Oxenlwe, the study's lead researcher, in an interview. "We need to be able to keep the internet growing, but we also need to create new technologies that use less energy."

Scientists, telecom executives, and large technology corporations are always clamoring for a faster, more efficient internet. Many attempts have been made to increase the amount of data that can be transferred. Others are working to reduce latency, which is the amount of time it takes for data to respond to commands. 

Oxenlwe and scientists who study materials say that the chip being tested by Scandinavian researchers would greatly increase the amount of data that could be sent over the internet.

The chip generates a rainbow of colors by using a single laser and a device known as a "frequency comb." These light arrays transport data faster and more efficiently through fiber optic cables.

"It's like you're on the New Jersey Turnpike and all those cars are linked together in such a way that they move in unison," said John Ballato, a material science professor at Clemson University who was not involved in the research.

Using a single laser-powered chip, Swedish and Danish researchers achieved lightning-fast data transfer speeds of 1.84 petabytes per second during the experiment. Experts estimate that over 1,000 lasers would be required to achieve that performance.

The Scandinavian team's speed results, according to Ballato, are exciting. "Things like that don't come along very often," he said.

He cited the chip's simple design as a benefit. Using that, along with a specialized but not incredibly difficult to obtain fiber optic cable, makes it possible that companies will use this method to transmit data in the future, he said. "This is not an isolated incident," he explained. "This isn't some crazy exotic that we'll make once and never again."

He did, however, acknowledge that the design is still in the research phase and that it could take years to become mainstream. He believes it is unlikely that internet service providers will tear up fiber optic cables that power the internet and replace them using this method.

He thinks that this technology will be used to build local, shorter-distance 5G networks, which will be needed for data-hungry technologies like self-driving cars to work. "Everyone is crying out for 5 g," he said. "That's an extremely large [power] and bandwidth-hungry proposition."