Will chips ever be able to communicate to each other without circuit boards or wires? If it's up to Sun Labs, chips certainly will. Named "proximity communication," Sun Labs is working diligently to perfect this type of technology that will allow one chip to transmit signals directly to another one alongside it.

CNET News writer Michael Kanellos spoke with Senior Research Robert Drost at Sun Labs, who noted that this technology offers an increase in performance with a reduction in energy consumption.

"Proximity communication relies on capacitive coupling -- the ability of two electrically charged devices close to each other to interact," the article explains. "Transmitters on one chip can send signals to another. These signals are then amplified. A much higher number of transmitter/receiver pairs than pins can be inserted in a specific area, which allows for more simultaneous connections."

The performance of input-output paths that interconnect chips to its computer has not advanced along with processors' performance levels, which have steadily increased over the years. This imbalance between the two can cause "bottlenecks" that inevitably hamper a system's overall performance. The architecture of chip connections is a primary cause of this performance disparity, Drost claims.

"Processors are inserted into a package that contains metal pins. The pins secure a chip to a board and create the electrical connections. Unfortunately, the pins are rather large to be electrical and mechanical devices. Only a few hundred fit on a package that contains a processor with several million transistors. Bandwidth, thus, is constrained," writes Kanellos.

Drost says architecturally, the goal is to separate the chips from the printed circuit board that will ultimately be taken out of the system. "Rather than have the chips soldered onto a printed circuit board, the printed circuit board is taken out of the system," he said. "It is not that all chip wires are evil. It is just that they are large. The number of pins to get to the outside world has gone up only five to 10 percent a year."

A key to developing this technology is maintaining chip alignment, which is critical for proximity communication and proving to be a formidable adversary given the heat and vibration inherent in a computer system. "There are some very interesting technical problems that must be solved, such as, how do you maintain alignment?" said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. "But if it does pay off, it could be quite revolutionary." [...read more...]

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