Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA), said they had received nearly 44.3 million in research funding to study the use of the laser beam to move data between the microprocessor, which significantly increases the speed of data that moves between hundreds or thousands of chips in the current context of supercomputers.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Sun gave the first payment of $ 8.1 million to start the project, which is based on research conducted under DARPA’s High Productivity Computing Systems. Sun partners Stanford and the University of California at San Diego, and two firms in silicon photonics, Luxtera and Kotura, The New York Times reported. Sun offers conquered teams led by IBM (NYSE: IBM), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ).

Sun hopes to find a way to replace them with laser beams cables used to connect chips in a supercomputer. Data-carrying light is many times faster than the son, who also additional problems of generating electricity and heat. In the development of laser chips connected, Sun will also prove the viability of the manufacturing process. Today, chips are made on large silicon wafers, where each processor circuits are etched. The wafer is then cut into different fingernail size chips. Processors made in this direction require wired interconnects.

To replace the sons of light, Sun plans to build on the lookout for what he calls “macrochips”, which are long tables chips that use laser beams for communication. These macrochips replace the hundreds or thousands of chips in the current context of supercomputers, which would become faster and more energy-efficient, and more compact as a result.

“Optical communications could be a real game of the evolution of technology - an elegant way to continue impressive performance gains while completely changing the economy at large-scale production of silicon,” Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer and vice Executive Vice President of Research and Development for the Sun, said in a statement.

The use of light in chip interconnects is part of a science called silicon photonics. The technology promises to extend Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years. Restrictions global economic, financial investment in semiconductors began to decelerate the prediction of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, Sun said. Boosting computer performance by collecting hundreds or thousands of hearts on a macrochip could make unlimited extension of Moore’s Law. Advances in supercomputing are expected to be useful to a broad class of companies and organizations, including those involved in the exploration of energy, biotechnology, and weather modeling.

Other chipmakers are also heavily invested in silicon photonics. Intel is working on integrating a laser chips that can provide communications speed of 40 Gbit / s and above. The company last July, has proved a major breakthrough in the form of work the first 40G silicon laser modulator.