We can make those photons go faster
The only way you can do that is to change the medium they go through. And then there's this trivial limit called "c" - known to many as the speed of light in a vacuum.
Intel has demoed what it says it "believes" is the world's only silicon photonics module that uses a hybrid silicon laser – a breakthrough that should allow such advances as vastly improved system-to-system interconnects in the data center. The demo of the 100Gb/sec module was presented via a video during Intel CTO Justin …
Just the other day it was reported that the weak point of the fibre is the fibre itself. Get rid of that and use a hollow tube, and you're looking at upping signal speeds by 40% or something...
However, I suspect they really meant turning them on and off faster. Nice to know that either could be done though. And more colours. And more cables in parallel.
The only remaining question is will it blend / play Crysis / carry all the porn blah blah that everyone always asks...
At our workplace we were looking at 10GbE networking for a couple of machines. We may yet go that way, since the switches we have support it, and on a couple of our machines, it'll make sense. (Think OpenStack Swift Proxies, Rados Gateway, etc.)
The cheapest card we can get though is nearly AU$600.
If this technology moves ahead, I could see us not bothering with 10GbE and using 100GbE instead.
Intel were trying for cheap fibre NICs initially. Wanted to get 100Gb to desktop for the wired house with a price around $30. Maybe they succeeded. Now if there was only a network capable of using this end speed outside of South Korea.
More 3D movies to be streamed around the house to induce nausea and headaches, and thats before you finish watching the wretched lack of plot ? The eventual holographic videa phone or broadcast ? Smoke signals when you burn the smart TV after realising that with 5000 HD channels all are reruns of 1960s or worse crap ?