IBM continues to advance towards the technology of using light to carry data quickly "among cores within a microprocessor, taking the company closer to developing a chip that may one day run notebooks with the horsepower of today's supercomputers."
" Communications between processor cores today...is handled through copper wire that moves electrical impulses. IBM hopes to eventually replace that wire with a light beam that follows a tiny silicon strip...to its destination. Light carries more data in the same amount of time as copper by being 100 times faster."
"But the bigger problem in eventually taking light-driven chips to market will be in manufacturing... Introducing light technology means new equipment and a whole new way of production. Such a major transformation will take time."