Computers and smartphones are about to get a lot faster. If Roger Tipton succeeds with his invention, light will replace copper wires as connectors of computer components. This will be like using fiberoptic cable to access the web instead of a dial-up modem. A recent arrival to the University of South Florida, Roger was inspired to invent during high school shop class in Cleveland.
TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: 0:01
Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Richard Miles: 0:39
Traveling at the speed of light, right from the comfort of your own keyboard. Is that the future of computing? I'm your host Richard Miles. My guest today is Roger Tipton, CEO of Path Optical Systems, which has developed optical interconnects to replace copper wires on computer chips. Welcome to Radio Cade, Roger.
Roger Tipton: 0:56
Hi, how are you?
Richard Miles: 0:57
Uh , so I'm going to start with a really basic question. What on earth is an optical interconnect? What does it do?
Roger Tipton: 1:02
What it does is it connects different components on a PCB board. So if you've got to get information from the processor to the hard drive or from memory or wherever that information has to travel, that's an interconnect and most of them are copper interconnects at this point.
Richard Miles: 1:18
Okay. So if I could actually look at the chips, if I had the ability to do that, all those connections are being made by essentially tiny copper wires right now.
Roger Tipton: 1:24
Yeah. Yeah. And you can actually see it on the green PCB board. That's inside the little copper traces running everywhere.
Richard Miles: 1:30
So your technology in place of those copper wires, it's actually flashes of light?
Roger Tipton: 1:35
Yeah. That is actually how it works. And I think a good analogy of this is if you remember dial up internet that was on copper wires from your phone line, and they replaced that with fiber optic cables. And that is the exact same technology and some similar materials. And that just sped everything up that allowed Netflix and YouTube and videos and downloading and all the amazing things we have. And we're bringing that same exact technology to your phone or your server or your laptop. And those are the kinds of speed increases that we will see on those devices with these new interconnects.
Richard Miles: 2:12
Roger tell me, is their a reason it hasn't been done already? What was holding that back? Was there a technical or physical reason why? Because fiber optics has been around a while, right?
Roger Tipton: 2:21
Yeah. 30, 40 years. And really it's 3D printing has allowed this new technology, 3D printing is opening up all kinds of opportunities and all kinds of new things. And I think we were the first to apply 3D printing to this challenge. And so I think that's why we're first.
Richard Miles: 2:37
So this will mak