IBM's "green optical link" promises one second movie downloads

So IBM is apparently working like crazy on some next-gen communications technology that -- ready to have your mind blown? -- "uses light instead of wires to send information." We know, this is some crazy future crap up in here, but check it out. Apparently this so-called light-based communications system is supposed to be ten times more power efficient than others in its class, and can transfer data at speeds far greater than our current 4Mbps token-ring networks and even the next-gen 10BASE2 Ethernet (as if!); if optical data communications are actually real, well, it's just in time because we've been seriously maxing out our Tandy 1000 playing MUDs. Touting such other gibberish as "high definition content," and "ex-aflop supercomputing," IBM's Optocards (which feature integrated "Optochips") can apparently move data at up to 8Tbps / 1TBps, which isn't quite up to snuff to compete with Alcatel-Lucent's latest, but is still, like, way more than necessary for accessing the Engadget BBS.

[SimonRichards @ Mar 1st 2008 5:47AM]

I have saved that image in case you guys decide to change it.

Why? For the win, of course!

[bi0hazard @ Mar 1st 2008 7:05AM]

It's an older version of the Star Wars Kid!

[Satish @ Mar 1st 2008 8:14AM]

reminds me of semaphore lines for visual communication.. ;-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line

[hemmy @ Mar 1st 2008 8:45AM]

It's a drunk and overweight Green Lantern, using his powers for mischief to combat depression.

[Rik @ Mar 1st 2008 9:21AM]

I actually came accros that picture last wendnesday when searching on google on "green-frickin-lasers" :-P. Took me a while to think up where I had seen it before.

[nate @ Mar 1st 2008 9:55AM]

I see your schwartz is as big as mine.

[phanbouy @ Mar 1st 2008 11:53AM]

The second best image after this would be George Michael reennacting the light saber battle in the garage.

[MrGam3r @ Mar 1st 2008 9:31PM]

When i first saw that picture, im like "woah! its the zune man! =O"

[derX @ Mar 1st 2008 5:53AM]

I'm sorry, I really did try to read that article, but that picture of green glowing gluttony was way too distracting.

There really needs to be some sort of a warning there.

Also, the black bar needs to placed lower.

[farris @ Mar 1st 2008 12:40PM]

It's spelled "larger..."

As in, "The black bar needs to be placed LARGER."

:P

[ijyt @ Mar 1st 2008 5:56AM]

Couldn't you have gotten any green laser picture?

[Homeboy @ Mar 1st 2008 6:07AM]

It's called fibre optics, welcome to the last millennium. A buddy ofmine was rocking internet an ass kicking 10/10Mbit internet connection via fibre optics back in 2001.


PS: Is that a super sized agent Bauer???

[Kizorblade @ Mar 1st 2008 6:18AM]

I'm pretty sure 2001 is this millennium.

[mike @ Mar 1st 2008 10:17AM]

Actually Homeboy is right. I remember hearing about the same exact thing in the years 2000 and 2001. What i don't understand is why he got low ranked and the idiot below him got highly ranked!!! so he made a mistake is counting millennium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My god this website is becoming full of idiots.

[Homeboy @ Mar 1st 2008 10:40AM]

Kizorblade: Read my post again. Where did I write that 2001 is apart of the previous millennium? No where!

Internet via Fibre optics were in use before year 2k but wasn't available for the average Joe off course.

[Brandon @ Mar 1st 2008 11:58AM]

I guess they're more interested in the grammar than technology. I also thought of fiber optics when I read communication using light. I don't see anything new in the article. May be it has something to do with the light is green laser? (Is it even related?) May be the green laser has shorter wavelength, and thus can be chopped at shorter interval to send more data given time? Give us some explanation, thanks.

[Adam @ Mar 1st 2008 11:57AM]

Apparently you guys don't understand this concept called sarcasm.

Try reading the beginning of the post again and see if you can catch it this time...

[Adam @ Mar 1st 2008 11:58AM]

err.. and by post, I mean article...

[david_topping @ Mar 1st 2008 6:07AM]

These Engadget guys are just such show offs with their Tandy 1000's while I have to make do with my Trash-80, still if I can build an interface between my 110b modem and this technology I should be able to get the treasure from the swamp a lot faster than anyone else.

Oh and what's with the plural for MUD? There only ever was one MUD and it was at Essex then BT. RIP.

[Chris @ Mar 1st 2008 8:31AM]

Strange, it was my instinct to start rambling about the trash 80 as well. Clearly the plural for MUD is MUDz as everything back then was: warez, gamez, crackz, serialz - wait, what was I doing on the Internet all that time? And personally I think FieryMUD was the greatest, though there was only ever like 15 people on at any time. Connecting to FieryMUD via Lynx and Telnet in 1995 was my favourite though. What better way to blow a weekend than killing insects in the farmer's fields?

[Lorenzo @ Mar 1st 2008 9:45AM]

The MUD at BT (well, BT MUSE, run by Simon Dally RIP) was MUD2, so perhaps a plural isn't unreasonable.

[david_topping @ Mar 1st 2008 10:20AM]

Lorenzo, you're right and I should have remembered... the problem is that 1985 was a LONG time ago. 50Mb of disk cost £47k, that means that IBM's Optocards would fill that in, oh wait my calculator doesn't have enough decimal places.

[Ahmed Alzayani @ Mar 1st 2008 6:08AM]

1TBps per second

so that's 1TB per square second

Acceleration?!

[Ender Wiggin @ Mar 1st 2008 9:40AM]

I was about point that out too.

[Ed @ Mar 1st 2008 6:17AM]

Isn't it exabyte or exa-byte? You'd think the Original Borg would know that.

[eemarty @ Mar 1st 2008 12:10PM]

It's exabyte for the same reason it's megabyte instead of mega-byte or millimeter instead of milli-meter. SI prefixes dont need dashes....it was double funny because the quote's unneeded dash was in the wrong place anyway.

[JagoMidnight @ Mar 3rd 2008 11:04AM]

Uh, whats double funny is that neither of you can read, the dash wasn't inserted to suggest that exabyte is hyphenated, it's to join the letters of the word through the line break.

ex-
abyte = exabyte

Also, the post uses exaflop.

[Kurian @ Mar 1st 2008 6:31AM]

At 8Tbps / 1TBps per second
you can download 1 movie in one second,
3 movies in two seconds,
6 movies in three seconds,
and 10 movies in four seconds.

WOW.

[Homeboy @ Mar 1st 2008 6:40AM]

Theoretically it's possible but reality is different. There are limitations like network card and your harddrive's write speed.

[Kurian @ Mar 1st 2008 6:42AM]

Duuuude. 1TB[b]ps[/b] [b]per second[/b]

[Down @ Mar 1st 2008 8:09AM]

You're thinking of Gigabyte per second, but it says TBps!

So you could download 212 movies (4.7gb) or 1428 movies (700mb) in one second.

[Kurian @ Mar 1st 2008 8:31AM]

@Down

Fail.

And you missed the point.

[Sora267 @ Mar 1st 2008 8:53AM]

"So you could download 212 movies (4.7gb) or 1428 movies (700mb) in one second."

Please explain to me how 1428 movies take up about 4 gigabytes less space than 212 movies.

[sam @ Mar 1st 2008 11:18AM]

You misunderstand. 4.7gb is the size of a single layer dvd image, and 700mb a common size for a compressed movie.

[Kyanges @ Mar 1st 2008 11:15AM]

"""Please explain to me how 1428 movies take up about 4 gigabytes less space than 212 movies."""



They're all YouTube Quality?

[hamster3000 @ Mar 1st 2008 4:57PM]

That's a lot of pr0n.

[Eriksson @ Mar 1st 2008 6:53AM]

Looks like IBM employees have dropped their blue suits

[nak @ Mar 1st 2008 7:00AM]

Err. What's up with the commentary? You're treading in to gizmodo territory there. Why not call IBM a horny teenager having wet dreams?

[Japaninator @ Mar 1st 2008 11:30AM]

Who came up with the name IBM? That's just asking for snickering from the teenage (or elementary school) peanut gallery.

[webon @ Mar 1st 2008 7:11AM]

The Zune tattoo dude grew a beard?
and
wow how long till this becomes reality?

[Wodheila @ Mar 1st 2008 7:48AM]

Now if I could just find a way to watch them at this speed instead of having to waste two hours sitting through them we'd be getting somewhere.

[TW @ Mar 1st 2008 8:31AM]

That Picture reminds me of batman forever when they was brainwashing people which is something that has always been in the back of my mind with this switching over to DTV but anyway do not trust IBM yall i repeat DO NOT TRUST IBM "when it all falls down" they gonna be the company in charge of keep our count.

[markcih @ Mar 1st 2008 9:21AM]

This technology was called "sky-fiber" back in the day - lasers instead of fiber-optics, to beam data from office building to office building, or from the ground to a satellite. Except it only works via line-of-sight and does not work through rain, fog or snow.

[Jason @ Mar 1st 2008 10:11AM]

Hmm... I think this may be our only defense once the machines become self-aware. The automatous sentry gun will loose its orientation and then we can get in range to turn it off with our electronic remotes! I just hope they dont teach Icub about the weather or else that robot will think of some way to get around it.

on a serious note, couldnt the receiver use infrared or some alternative vision to see the beam through poor weather conditions? I also saw on discovery channel (i think it was fibre optic cables) they stretch glass and wrap it so its like a copper wrapped cable, and the light is beamed through the glass wrapped cable. In that scenario weather conditions would not hinder our movie download speeds. =P

[AJ in the East Bay @ Mar 1st 2008 9:22AM]

John C. Dvorak cracked me up last night when he brought this up. He said "Yeah, right. How are they going to deliver a movie in a second? Are they going to drive by your house and throw a DVD and hit you in the head? Yeah, that'll take about a second."

Hilarious. I freakin' love that cranky geek.

[davisbacon @ Mar 1st 2008 10:26AM]

Best chuckle I've had reading this blog...

Hmmm Now if we could only get the "green laser" mounted on some frickin sharks...

[Alex R @ Mar 1st 2008 1:57PM]

Whats with all the Austin Powers references? Has it only just taken off in the states? It's been over here in England for yonks.

[fblc @ Mar 1st 2008 12:26PM]

What happens in bad weather and if we have to go around corners. If they have a way to bend light beams then I think we've got it made.

[Prasand J. @ Mar 1st 2008 12:34PM]

I imagine they'd use a relay type system, at intermittent points. Or think of an elbow joint in your pipes ... except instead of straight pipes between the varyingly placed joints, you have light.

[Alex R @ Mar 1st 2008 1:58PM]

Same as how a periscope works I'm guessing. Mirrors.