Communication in data centres in near future can become hassle-free as engineers are proposing to eliminate most of the wires and substitute infrared free-space optics for communications.<\/p>\n
\nThough researchers from Pennsylvania State University tried radio frequency signalling, the beams became wide over short distances.<\/p>\n
The Microsoft engineers found that radio-frequency signalling resulted in high interference, limited active links and limited throughput — the amount of data that can go through a system.<\/p>\n
“We use a free space optical link. It uses a very inexpensive lens, we get a very narrow infrared beam with zero interference and no limit to the number of connections with high throughput,” said Mohsen Kavehrad from Pennsylvania State University.<\/p>\n
The Free-space optical Inter-Rack nEtwork with high FLexibilitY — or Firefly — architecture is a joint project of Pennsylvania State University, Stony Brook University and Carnegie Mellon University.<\/p>\n
“It would use infrared lasers and receivers mounted on top of data centre racks to transmit information. The laser modules are rapidly reconfigurable to acquire a target on any rack,” the study explained.<\/p>\n
There is also minimal human interference that could break the laser beams.<\/p>\n
According to Kavehrad, data centres may house 400,000 servers on racks filling a mile-long room.<\/p>\n
For most of the time in data centres, about 30 per cent of servers are offline. However, because they are still on, they continue to create heat and need cooling.<\/p>\n
The study estimates that by 2020, data centres will use a total of 140 billion kilowatts of electricity per hour.<\/p>\n
While fiber-optic cabling and energy expenditure for idle servers are problems, throughput is more critical.<\/p>\n
“We need to avoid over-provisioning and supply sufficient capacity to do the interconnect with minimal switches. We would like to get rid of the fiber optics altogether,” said Kavehrad in a paper presented at Photonics West 2017 in San Francisco.\u2014IANS<\/p>\n
Image: Alamy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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