ocessor design may only result in very small incremental improvements. Eleven nanometers may be the practical limit as to how small we can go before we hit the physical limits of what can be done using current semiconductor technology.
However, what IBM showed to the public on December 1, 2010 changes the game dramatically, especially for supercomputing applications. Eventually, these advances will filter down to the enterprise systems and even consumers.
Artist's conception of the future application of photonic routing elements onto a silicon wafer (IBM)
This technology -- with a name pulled seemingly right out of Star Trek is called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics.
Without getting too intergalactic and too technical of a description of how it actually works, it is essentially the fusion of optical technology with semiconductor technology. Instead of using semiconductor pathways to route data and for the processor interconnects, light pulses are being used instead, using components called Silicon Nanoscale Photonic and Electronic Transceivers, or SNIPERS.
To put all of this techno-jargon in the proper perspective, one must understand what is currently the benchmark for most powerful supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-1A.
This powerful Chinese supercomputer has achieved 2.67 Petaflop/s or 2.67 quadrillion floating point operations, per second.
This is so amazingly fast that it realizes the kind of scientific research and advanced simulation that only 10 years ago could only exist in a computer scientist's wet dreams. But the Tianhe-1A uses strictly conventional computer technology, assembled from over 14,000 Intel Xeon 5670-series x86 processors and 7,000 nVidia Tesla GPUs using a custom high-speed interconnect network that operates at 160Gbps per second.
But compared to future nanophotonics-based systems, assessing the legacy performance of the Tianhe-1A will be like comparing the top speed of a Segway personal transport to that of a Bugatti Veyron. Or an X-15.
The first application of IBM's nanophotonics technology will be used in the Blue Waters supercomputer, which will be installed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Urbana, Illinois in the Summer of 2011. This system, which is based on large blade clusters of IBM's 8-core POWER7 chip, will have a maximum peak throughput of 10 Petaflop/s, roughly four times faster than the Tianhe-1. It will also be much more compact and power-efficient as well, making it the most "green" supercomputer ever created.
However, even the Blue Waters supercomputer will become a clunky dinosaur once more and more nanophotonics elements are integrated onto microprocessors and replace many of the functions that traditional semiconductors perform today. And as with all supercomputing technologies, the equivalent of N minus 2 generations of processor performance will quickly find their way into enterprise systems and even consumer electronics.
Projected technological progression of photonics integration in supercomputing (IBM)
Eventually, perhaps by the year 2020 or even sooner, nanophotonic supercomputers will exist that approach the Exaflop range in terms of performance. What's an Exaflop? Well, try measuring the aggregate performance of about 250 Blue Waters or 1000 Tianhe-1A supercomputers and that's what you'll get. Did your head just explode? No? Because mine just did.
So with Exaflop-level supercomputing and enterprise computing, or even Petaflop-level consumer computing, just what exactly can you do with all of that processing power?
Well, with Exaflop/s, you can do the sort of things that take current supercomputers weeks or years to do in only minutes or days. It would allow the average citizen to gene sequence their babies the moment they are born to anticipate future diseases for an entire lifetime, or sequence their own DNA and apply corrective action as needed, such as synthesize custom medications.
It would allow for the real-time simulation of complex systems such as world weather and allow for meteorological science to advance at a level 