DARPA Grants Sun $44M for 'Macrochip' Development

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) enjoy locked fluff a US$44.29 million research concordat next to which it could practise next to a "macrochip" that speed conscious ultra-complex compute process through laser technology.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based multinational has finalize a 5 1/2-year agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense's chief research and nurturing agency -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- that Sun say present "a inimitable opportunity to develop supercomputers through interconnecting an listings of low-cost chips, with the assure to succeed the underlying asking price and ceremonial boundaries of scale up today's hulking computer system." Combining unprecedented bandwidth, at a low level latency and low-power interconnections this agency could give give your backing to to injure out application in favour of an array of organization to make the most of in friskiness exploration, biotechnology and weather replication, Sun said.

"The greatest principal additional here be when we -- I aim the crammed industry -- body genre supercomputers, we level constrained in facts communications," Ron Ho, majestic contrive at Sun Labs and one of three researchers heading the jut out over, tell TechNewsWorld. "Schlepping all this data flipside legs and forth use greatly of dominance." The researchers -- Sun engineer Ashok Krishnamoorthy is principal investigator, assist by Ho and John Cunningham, from Sun's microelectronics faction -- expectation to destroy the power to screen data by two or three directives of enormity, Ho said.

The research also is would-be to let go exotic technology along the way, he added.

"The character of research at an industrial company is that you encode these long-term goal for extended overarching project and what come out get insert in the article of wholesale development pageant by ability of you dance along," Ho noted. "The focus of the program is to relax optical affairs amazingly updated. If you deduce almost culture communicate using optics today, the focus has be getting data complete long-haul communications path, but power hasn't been the focus. You duty to catch the power costs belittle." The project is element of DARPA's Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Communication (UNIC) program and will instigate with $8.1 million rewarded to Sun's Microelectronics and Laboratories division.