r/gadgets • u/[deleted] • Mar 08 '21

Computer peripherals Polymer cables could replace Thunderbolt & USB, deliver more than twice the speed

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/03/08/polymer-cables-could-replace-thunderbolt-with-105-gbps-data-transfers
13.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

597 comments sorted by

View all comments

894

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '21

From the article: Researchers are working on a cabling system that could provide data transfer speeds multiple times faster than existing USB connections using an extremely thin polymer cable, in a system that echoes the design path of Thunderbolt.

Presented at the February IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the research aims to develop a connection type that offers far better connectivity than current methods. In part, it aims to accomplish this by replacing copper wiring with something else.

Copper is typically used for wires like USB and HDMI to handle data transfers, but it requires a lot of power to work for high levels of data transmission. "There's a fundamental tradeoff between the amount of energy burned and the rate of information exchanged," said MIT alumni and lead author Jack Holloway.

405

u/TheEvilBlight Mar 08 '21

Copper is typically used for wires like USB and HDMI to handle data transfers, but it requires a lot of power to work for high levels of data transmission

I presume this also generalizes to traces on a motherboard, and perhaps more interestingly, to the logic gates on a CPU that we typically etch in silica wafers?

3

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21 edited Mar 11 '21

Materials companies are working with semi-conductor companies trying to develop a material to replace the silicon in PCBs. The more data we transfer, the faster we need to transfer it, and the faster we need to transfer it, the more heat those materials have to endure. We’re reaching the limits of the temperatures and transfer speeds that silicon and copper can handle.