科学美国人60秒:美国研制首款光子芯片-托福听力下载

　　科学美国人60秒中文翻译：

　　Computer chips have two important parts-the logic on the chip, which computes and executes programs. 计算机芯片有两个至关重要的作用-其一是芯片上用于计算及执行程序的逻辑电路。

　　Then there's the part that sends and receives-gets data to crunch, sends back the answer. 另外则是用于数据处理，返回结果的发送及接收。

　　And while that first part, chip logic, has gotten much faster over the years, the transmission part has lagged behind. 而计算机芯片上的逻辑电路，由于近年来的发展运算速度得到快速提升，但数据传输部分却相对落后。

　　Because data gets sent via electrical signals passing through copper. 因为数据要通过铜线这种介质才能发送电子信号。

　　So researchers designed a chip that exchanges data with light instead. 因此研究人员研发出一款光子芯片，它可以用光来传输数据，速度相比过去大幅提升，能耗也大大减少。

　　By going into optics, we're able to relieve this fundamental bottleneck of copper, 通过用光来传输数据，我们能够缓解铜线传输所遇到的瓶颈问题，

　　and in doing so we're able to increase the bandwidth density on the chip, so how fast the chip can take data in and out, by an order of magnitude. 这样我们可以增加芯片的宽带密度及数据传输速度。

　　Chen Sun, a computer hardware researcher at UC Berkeley, and the startup Ayar Labs. 加州大学伯克利分校及 Ayar实验室的计算机硬件研究员孙辰说道。

　　A metal pin on the memory chip in your computer might transmit at 1.6 gigabits per second. 计算机内存芯片上的金属针脚的速度传输速度为每秒1.6 Gbps。

　　Sun's optical connection ups that rate to 2.5 gigabits per second. 而孙的超级芯片数据传输速度可达到每秒2.5 Gbps。

　　Not a huge difference on the face of it. 看来似乎并不是太大差异。

　　But the killer app here is that multiple wavelengths of light-up to 11-can be used simultaneously to send data through a single fiber. 但其过人之处在于通过单一的光纤进行数据传输最多可达11条的多条光波。

　　Which means this technology has potential speeds of 27.5 gigabits per second-more than an order of magnitude faster than today's standard. 这也就意味着其传输速度可达到每秒27.5 Gbps，比当今标准快一个数量级。

　　So that's the extra dimension we have to scale bandwidth that we don't have with normal electrical signals. 如果我们没有正常的电信号，就必须扩展宽带。

　　The findings appear in the journal Nature. 这项研究已经在《自然》杂志上发表。

　　These chips with optical connections are not just high-speed-they also require less energy than the copper versions. 这些通过光进行传输数据的芯片，速度相比过去大幅提升，能耗也大大减少。

　　That could be a big deal, with server farms projected to outpace every other commercial use of electricity within the next decade. 在接下来的10年中服务器群耗电量将会超过商业用电，这可是个大问题。

　　Going optical could thus be a win-win: faster processing using a fraction of the energy. 但光学的应用则会带来双赢的局面: 速度相比过去大幅提升，能耗也大大减少。

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