GAMING

High-speed optical engine supplier CyOptics has been awarded a study contract by Cray Inc. to demonstrate what the companies claim are unprecedented optical data transmission rates for future-generation supercomputers. The demonstration project targets rates of hundreds of Gigabits per second over optical fiber and is related to Cray's participation in the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program, which aims to develop high performance computing systems with sustained performance of one Petaflop on real-world applications by 2010. "CyOptics' technology leadership and precision manufacturing enable us to pursue this key development needed to realize cost-effective, high-bandwidth computing at large scale," contends Ed Coringrato, CyOptics' president and CEO. "This demonstration will make use of next-generation uncooled InP laser technology, WDM, and high-precision automated assembly processes to demonstrate cost-effective, ultra-high-speed bi-directional data transfer between co-located computing chassis." "Next-generation scientific computing system performance is limited by the rate at which data may be exchanged between processors using conventional copper-based technologies," adds Burton Smith, Cray's chief scientist. "Cray has long understood this fundamental limitation and looks forward to working with CyOptics to overcome it in order to advance high performance computing."