Google just had a bulb moment, and it could keep internet access from dark ages (literals). At the Moonshot Factory factory in the company, researchers have develop a chip They believe they should allow us to provide high speed internet access via beams of light, opening the possibility of making all these underground cables that we currently count on a thing in the past.
The project on which Google worked is the code name Taara, and the team working there announcement Friday, a new new generation chip which, she said, can make high speed Internet based on light. The new Taara chip is a “silicon photonic chip”, depending on the company, which can direct, follow and correct the light beams used to transmit data through the air without using cables. Oh, and this chip has roughly the size of a nail, compared to previous generations that have measured roughly as large as a traffic light.
According to Google, the operation of Taara is not entirely different from the operation of fiber optic cables. Traditional fiber also uses light to transport data – it simply does it through cables that cost a lot to bury Underground, in particular on a scale to support a massive network. Taara renounces physical threads and rather transmits the data directly through an invisible beam of light. The company claims that technology is able to transfer data to speeds up to 20 GBPS. For the moment, he can send this data to distances up to 12 miles.
Of course, Google is not the first to work with Light to provide data. The concept of “li-fi” was Around for more than a decade and has started to gain ground in recent years, including IEEE officially recognizing technology In 2023 and establish standards for this. Starlink uses lasers to provide data from its low orbit satellites that communicate with the basic stations on the ground.
But Taara does not radiate space data, but rather through the earth. As long as the project bridges can be seen (and the company has worked on the attenuation of the disruptors of the vision line such as birds, rain and fog), they can remain connected and transmit data. In a Interview with WiredThe project manager Mahesh Krishnaswamy offered high promises and a direct blow to a competition. “We can offer 10, if not 100 times more bandwidth to a end user than a typical Starlink antenna, and do it for a fraction of the cost,” he told the publication-although Wired noted that the claim seems to concern the future potential of Taara and not something that he can really reach on a large scale.
Taara is more than theoretical, however –it is used and commercially operational in 12 countries, by cable. He was also deployed in Coachella to complete the telephone networks. And, according to some experts, light -based technology could be essential to the future internet iterations, such as radiofrequency bands Available bandwidth current. So that there is light.