Members of Wireless and Photon Systems and Networks Research Group (ERAFOS) of AUTh created the fastest RAM in the world, which stores light instead of electricity.
The researchers αντικατέστησαν την ηλεκτρονική μνήμη με ένα αντίστοιχο κύκλωμα οπτικής μνήμης RAM τυχαίας προσπέλασης, η οποία υποστηρίζει ταχύτητες ανάγνωσης και εγγραφής data of the order of 10Gb/s (i.e. 10 billion bits in one second), achieving twice the speed of the fastest electronic memories RAM made by world-renowned IT companies such as Intel and IBM!
The research team consists of Dr. Christos Vagiona, the Dr. Theoni Alexoudi, the PhD Candidate Apostoli Tsakyridis, the Assistant Professor of the Department of Informatics of AUTh, Nikos Plero and the Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics of AUTh, Amalia Miliou.
The study was published in the prestigious journal Optics Letters (DOI 10.1364 / OL.44.001821), one of the largest scientific journals in optical technologies, issued by Optical Society of America. In addition, the international scientific journal "Optics and Photonics News magazine » published an extensive relevant article and hosted an interview with Dr. Ch. Vagionas (https://www.osa-opn.org/home/newsroom/2019/may/climbing_the_memory_wall%E2%80%9D/).
The scientific achievement, which is the product of a long-term effort of the AUTh research team that started in 2009, solves a long-standing computer problem, also known as the "Wall of Memory".
According to this, the speeds of random access RAMs increase for more than 30 years at a much slower rate than the corresponding processor speeds, resulting in an ever-increasing gap between the performance of processors and RAMs, as the processor will have to "wait" to receive data from slow memory, so it can not process it quickly and delay other processes.
The "heart" of optical RAM consists of fast optical switches, the equivalent of electronic transistors in photonic technology, interconnected in a standard optical array two states, of "0" and "1", while a third optical switch controls whether the operation of Read or Write to the memory will be performed.
As light cannot be "trapped" spatially and therefore stored as easily as electrons and electronic memories, the team implemented a technique that utilizes two interdependent but different wavelengths: when the one wavelength dominates within the proposed device-memory, then forces the other to remain off, so by assigning the digits 1 and 0 to the two different wavelengths digital storage is achieved.
Even better performance is predicted in the future, as the research team intends to study optical memories of higher capacity, with multiple memory cells, which take advantage of the different wavelengths of light.
The innovative research ideas of the AUTH team are funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK) and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GGET) through the research projects CAM-UP ("Optical Content Access Memories for fast search directorate", with Scientific Manager Dr. Christos Vagionas) and ORION ("Optical Random Access Memories with low energy consumption for fast response and high performance in computing environments", with Dr. Theoni Alexoudis as Scientific Manager).
________________
- Opera GX: browser-only specialist
- AMD Ryzen 9 3950X third generation monster at 749 dollars
- Zippyshare closes the popular service?
