Sound: The Next Frontier for High Speed Computer Processing

When most people think about sound in relation to high-speed networking, they think about the quality of sound embedded in their high-definition videos or streaming from their favourite music services. What if we told you that sound could be the next frontier in high-speed computer processing? Well, it looks like that might be the case in the not-too-distant future… Breakthrough research out of the University of Sydney (Australia) has led to the development of a process capable of converting optical data into storable sound waves. The process makes it very possible that future iterations of network technology could store and send data as light waves to receivers that would then convert those light waves into sound waves that computer chips could interpret as meaningful data. The idea of using light waves to store and transmit data is nothing new. Scientists have known about the potential for years. The problem has always been converting optical data into a format computer chips could work with, in a way that was both fast and efficient.

University of Sydney researchers described the problem of converting optical data into something more usable as comparable to the difference between thunder and lightning. In other words, the speed of light in air is more than 880,000 times faster than the speed of sound. Even if computer chips could read data in the optical domain, they would not be able to keep up with the speed at which that data travels. Thus, the need to slow it down during the conversion process.

Phononics Is the Answer

The field of storing and transmitting data in the audio domain is known as phononics. Both private enterprise and public institutions have been researching phononics for quite some time in the hope of developing some sort of technological advantage over the current process of converting optical data into electrons. The Australian researchers may finally have come up with the answer via phononics. Current technologies that transmit optical data before converting it into electrons that can be read and stored by computer chips still produces pretty amazing results compared to our capabilities of a decade ago. The process has an inherent weakness though: it produces an incredible amount of waste heat. That waste heat limits the practical use of optical-electron applications. Phononics has solved the problem. The process developed by the Australian researchers eliminates waste heat by converting optical data to sound waves. More importantly, computer chips can more quickly read, analyse and use audio data as compared to electron data. Researchers say that the process has proved successful enough to open the door to more powerful signal processing and future quantum computing applications. Those of us in the data centre industry eagerly await further development from Australia. If it turns out their process possesses both mass-market appeal and financial viability, it will completely transform our understanding and application of high-speed computer processing. There will be huge implications in everything from global financial transactions to scientific research to global media access. Source: https://thestack.com/data-centre/2017/09/19/researchers-achieve-phononic-data-storage-breakthrough/