A team of researchers has recorded world’s fastest Internet speed from a single chip that can help download 1,000 high-definition movies in a split second, at a data speed of 44.2 Terabits per second from a single light source.
Researchers from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities successfully tested and recorded the fastest internet data speed from a single optical chip.
Published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, the findings have the potential to fast-track telecommunications capacity worldwide.
Such demonstrations are usually confined to a laboratory but, for this study, researchers achieved such data speed using existing communications infrastructure, where they were able to efficiently load-test the network.
They used a new device that replaces 80 lasers with one single piece of equipment known as a micro-comb, which is smaller and lighter than existing telecommunications hardware.
“We’re currently getting a sneak-peak of how the infrastructure for the internet will hold up in two to three years’ time, due to the unprecedented number of people using the internet for remote work, socialising and streaming,” said Dr Bill Corcoran, co-lead author and lecturer in electrical and computer systems engineering at Monash University.
And it’s not just Netflix the researchers are talking about here.
“It’s the broader scale of what we use our communication networks for. This data can be used for self-driving cars and future transportation and it can help the medicine, education, finance and e-commerce industries, as well as enable us to read with our grandchildren from kilometres away,” explained Corcoran.
“Long-term, we hope to create integrated photonic chips that could enable this sort of data rate to be achieved across existing optical fibre links with minimal cost,” said Distinguished Professor Arnan Mitchell from RMIT.
Initially, these would be attractive for ultra-high speed communications between data centres.
“However, we could imagine this technology becoming sufficiently low cost and compact that it could be deployed for commercial use by the general public in cities across the world,” Mitchell added.
–IANS