Engineers Build Efficient Chip So Fast it Can Transmit All Internet’s Traffic in Under a Second

07 February 2023 SHIV S MISHRA

By splitting a single laser beam into different wavelengths of light, engineers have been able to transmit data at a rate of almost twice the combined internet traffic of the world per second. This head-scratching achievement was made with just a laser and single optical chip. Engineers from Chalmers University of Technology and the Technical Univ. of Denmark fired an infrared laser through a splitter called a “frequency comb” which divided the light into many different colors. Each of the colors, or frequencies, can carry data by modulating their amplitude, phase, and polarization. The total amount of data that can be encoded is 1.8 petabits per second, or 1.8 million gigabytes; 800,000 more than the average global bandwidth of the whole internet. A single optical chip designed by Chalmers was easily able to carry 1.8 Pbit/s, which—with contemporary state-of-the-art commercial equipment—would otherwise require more than 1,000 lasers.