RECORD speed: Optical chip inaugurates data transfer

Not only is the evolution of electronic devices the hallmark of technology. Recently, the production of an optical chip by engineers in Denmark and Sweden ushered in the fastest data transfer in history.

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Data transfer speed in record time reached an incredible 1.84 petabytes per second (PB/s).

In this way, the new chip presents a data transfer speed approximately twice the traffic recorded globally. It is such an interesting novelty that the optical chip is 20 times faster than NASA's network, known as ESnet6.

Learn the details of the innovation

The optical chip is an experiment by scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. To create the chip, the researchers used only a light source and an optical chip.

For the chip to work is quite simple. An infrared laser radiates light to the chip, which splits the light into different frequencies. In this way, light encodes data that modulates aspects of light, such as polarization, phase, and amplitude.

The physics and technology experiment, published in the journal Nature Photonics, made use of 1.84 petabytes per second, which was encoded in 223 wavelength channels in an optical fiber of approximate length of 7.9 km.

Experiment breaks previous record

To measure the speed of the optical chip, the researchers made use of a computer program with the purpose of dimensioning the chip's data transfer potential.

The record previously recorded through this experiment was a speed of 1.02 petabytes per second (PB/s). This speed was obtained in May 2022.

The unit of information known as a petabyte is larger than a terabyte. To get an idea, a petabyte is equivalent to more than 1 quadrillion bytes. To store files with these dimensions, more than 740 million floppy disks would be needed.