13 votes

Google’s Taara is launching a new chip to deliver high-speed Internet with light

Posted by skybrian
Tags: google, internet, alphabet, taara, networking, hardware, semiconductors, silicon photonics, light, infrared.near, mahesh krishnaswamy, author.steven levy, source.wired, paywall
https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-google-taara-chip-internet-by-light/

Link information

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Title
Google's Taara Hopes to Usher in a New Era of Internet Powered by Light
Authors
Steven Levy, Lauren Goode, Justin Ling, Sophie Charara, Paresh Dave, Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, Vittoria Elliott, Boone Ashworth, Matt Burgess, Fernanda González, Makena Kelly
Published
Feb 28 2025
Word count
1181 words

11 comments

  1. [6]
    vord
    Link
    This reporting irks me. RADIO WAVES ARE LIGHT WAVES. So it's not visible light spectrum. So what is it? Radio? infrared? UV? Xray? Certainly hope they're not beaming xrays as LOS network transmitters

    This reporting irks me. RADIO WAVES ARE LIGHT WAVES.

    So it's not visible light spectrum. So what is it? Radio? infrared? UV? Xray?

    Certainly hope they're not beaming xrays as LOS network transmitters

    11 votes
    2. [4]
      updawg
      Link Parent
      Generally, "light" refers to visible light, though it can refer to all EM radiation.

      Generally, "light" refers to visible light, though it can refer to all EM radiation.

      1. [3]
        vord
        Link Parent
        But they explicitly say it's invisible light. Point to point Microwave links are nothing new...up to 100km distances and 10GB links as well. Older ones are unwieldy, but I'm not deep in that...

        But they explicitly say it's invisible light.

        Point to point Microwave links are nothing new...up to 100km distances and 10GB links as well. Older ones are unwieldy, but I'm not deep in that sector.

        Now if they're affordable enough for consumers to build P2P meshes OTOH, now that has potential.

        3 votes
        1. updawg
          Link Parent
          I think that's a logical name for near-IR wavelength when explaining it to lay people. It's still something that's more closely associated with visible light and is easier to understand as the...

          I think that's a logical name for near-IR wavelength when explaining it to lay people. It's still something that's more closely associated with visible light and is easier to understand as the light that our eyes just can't quite see, whereas radio waves and x-rays are mostly seen as simply radio waves and x-rays by the uninformed.

          That's how I interpreted it when I read the first sentence of your comment, so I was glad it was confirmed by em-dash.

          2 votes
        2. papasquat
          Link Parent
          These aren't microwaves, they're infrared, which is generally considered light.

          These aren't microwaves, they're infrared, which is generally considered light.

          2 votes
  2. skybrian
    Link
    https://archive.is/X4SVp …

    https://archive.is/X4SVp

    Over the past few years, Taara has made advances in implementing its technology in the real world. Instead of beaming from space, Taara’s “light bridges”—which are about the size of a traffic light—are earthbound. As X’s “captain of moonshots” Astro Teller puts it, “As long as these two boxes can see each other, you get 20 gigabits per second, the equivalent of a fiber-optic cable, without having to trench the fiber-optic cable.”

    …

    Taara is now a commercial operation, working in more than a dozen countries. One of its successes came in crossing the Congo River. On one side was Brazzaville, which had a direct fiber connection. On the other, Kinshasa, where internet used to cost five times more. A Taara light bridge spanning the 5-kilometer waterway provided Kinshasha with nearly equally cheap internet. Taara was also used at the 2024 Coachella music festival, augmenting what would have been an overwhelmed cellular network. Google itself is using a light bridge to provide high-speed bandwidth to a building on its new Bayview campus where it would have been difficult to extend a fiber cable.

    3 votes
  3. [4]
    zestier
    Link
    The bit I'm most confused about is the claimed application to a potential 7G. It seems like this technology is fundamentally dependent on line of sight, which it obviously won't have in the...

    The bit I'm most confused about is the claimed application to a potential 7G. It seems like this technology is fundamentally dependent on line of sight, which it obviously won't have in the context of like a 7G phone. It makes me wonder about a lot of the claims made. Fixed connections to replace needing to lay fiber in problematic areas makes sense, but the other claims seem unclear on how they could be feasible.

    2 votes
    1. pbmonster
      Link Parent
      It won't have LOS between the phone and the cell tower, no. But you can connect cell towers that way. Which is very important, because once you serve a few 7G connections, you'll need a fat pipe...

      It won't have LOS between the phone and the cell tower, no. But you can connect cell towers that way. Which is very important, because once you serve a few 7G connections, you'll need a fat pipe to the rest of the internet. This means fiber to every single microcell - or something like a Light Bridge.

      I can see it for microcells on rooftops in the city, or for larger cells out in the country.

      1 vote
    2. [2]
      skybrian
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Yeah, looks like it’s backend network gear. This has nothing to do with the mobile devices themselves, but maybe it will be a useful component of some networks? They do try to hype it up by...

      Yeah, looks like it’s backend network gear. This has nothing to do with the mobile devices themselves, but maybe it will be a useful component of some networks?

      They do try to hype it up by speculating that it might do more someday, somehow:

      Teller envisions thousands of Taara chips in mesh networks, throwing beams of light, in everything from phones to data centers to autonomous vehicles. “So to the extent that you buy this, it’s going to be a very big deal,” he says.

      But then again, why would a phone or car need more network bandwidth?

      1. zestier
        Link Parent
        Yep, thinking that they're just trying to build hype with unrealistic speculation is where I'm at right now. I did consider that they meant they'd use it to connect the towers to each other or...

        Yep, thinking that they're just trying to build hype with unrealistic speculation is where I'm at right now. I did consider that they meant they'd use it to connect the towers to each other or something, but that just didn't feel like what they were getting at unless the goal was to be intentionally misleading. My understanding of 5G for example is that it's entirely about the connection from the tower to end devices and the towers are probably connected to the Internet itself via a physical connection, probably a lot of standard fiber.

        2 votes