Scientists Embed Electronic Components Into Optical Fibers 34
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the Universities of Southampton and Penn State have found a way to embed electronic components into optical fibers, in a breakthrough that could lead to the creation of super high-speed telecommunications networks. Rather than trying to merge flat chips with round optical fibers, the team of scientists used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials layer by layer directly into tiny holes in optical fibers. This bypasses the need to integrate fiber-optics onto a chip, and means that the data signal never has to leave the fiber."
All along the fiber, or just at the end? (Score:3, Insightful)
How much of the signal is "processed" (i.e. lost) by the electronics if they are sprinkled all through the fiber?
Interesting stuff.
Re:All along the fiber, or just at the end? (Score:5, Funny)
at the very end, where it gets snipped off and polished
The circuits are embedded near the ends, although this does tend to weaken the fibers. A conditioner is used to prevent split ends and promote healthy growth. The fibers become glossy and conduct great looking optical solitons. Essential oils also prevent tangles and give your fibers that extra bounce.
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What's next, makeup for your OS?
"Maybe it's Mandriva... Maybe it's Maybelline!"
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I have my router set to Chanel Number 6.
Built in repeaters? (Score:2)
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Yeah, you don't need anything new for that. Remember when all those ships mysteriously kept running over cables with their anchors? Yeah, there's probably extra mysterious boxes sitting along those routes now.
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But in America, you don't need to take all of the risks and spend all of that money anymore; the Patriot Act lets you stick "block boxes" in right at the cable heads.
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The Patriot Act allows you to walk into a data center and threaten the owners and operators with the loss of their freedoms if they don't immediately assume the proper position (bent over at the correct angle with their hands around their ankles for maximum insertion) and severe punishments for even talking about the incident.
Has a surprisingly similar series of events to gang rape in prisons.
So why go through all the hassle of intercepting when you can go straight to the source now with no resistance?
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The logical - evolutionary, if you will - next step is a political party whose leaders became infamous for demanding that Federal departments "stay on-message" when they were in the White House, for example, expanding that philosophy and using the aforementioned powers - whether Constitutional, blessed by Congress, or ignored by Congress - to silence those who criticize their actions.
That's not evolution. That's repeating history. Which is why it is so sad and frustrating when people cannot remember history and what happened with the FBI in the 60's and counter cultural movement. Hoover was fucking insane and the best example of somebody in government that is that last person you want in government.
It's even more important to remember the true history of our government because it is just made up of people. The people and their behavior is the same, the tools have evolved. It's a lo
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Well, the conventional solution for where you'd want inline repeaters is a section of (typically Erbium) doped fibre (same stuff used in fibre lasers), it's optically pumped at a shorter wavelength and amplifies the light in the fibre over broad band (typically 10s of nm). It's not clear to me that repeaters have any real advantage -- if you don't extinguish the existing light, it broadens your pulses (due to the finite bandwidth of the repeater), and it would presumably be electrically powered (whereas fib
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I'm wondering if this means they could have repeaters built in to the fibre itself. Could be pretty cool.
No, you still need energy to power up repeater. With this device you can put cable, and if I understand english correctly here, you will be able more easilly add new branch to existing infrastructure, probably without/with minimal interruption to existing end users. I am guessing device will still need power.
oh darn. (Score:1)
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Ethics aside, school sports are highly profitable. Penn State's profit (from football alone) was ~50 million. I think it's safe to say that many D1 schools can fund their sports programs easily (who knows about Penn State's future as they will lose future revenue).
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/10/news/companies/penn_state_football_scandal/index.htm [cnn.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/the-most-profitable-colle_n_802810.html#s217317&title=University_of_Texas [huffingtonpost.com]
cheaper? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Consider embedding LCD Crystals into the fiber.
The laser is constantly on but the crystals are beating, allowing light in at a specific angle so it hits a specific exit point at a specific frequency for the installed patch.
Lets say you can get 10-20 channels; that's a lot of bandwidth if we're talking OC Speeds. And realistically, it'd be a $10k dongle and $100k box you'd plug into your existing fiber.
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I don't understand this part: Where's the savings?
New applications may be the goal, rather than savings. If you can make the receiver end easy to tie to a chip when it's packaged, you can replace a great many pins with a fiber buss running into the chip package itself. Replace the North and South bridge CPU interconnects with fiber and the pinouts just shrank, traces and RF problems disappeared from the motherboard. If they can make it practical, I'd expect it in big iron first but it's still a promising direction for research.
If the semiconductors don't