The company has discovered a way to connect a computer's chips face-to-face rather than linking them through the web of fine wiring laid down on a circuit board, a Sun official said.

By eliminating the wiring, the discovery could speed up data movement by as much as 100 times while reducing power usage, the official said.

It could also eventually bring an end to the use of printed circuit boards, the wire-laden nerve network which takes up much of the room in electronic products.

Sun, a leading computer networking specialist based in Santa Clara, California, revealed its discovery in a paper presented to a conference on integrated circuits in San Jose on Tuesday.

The new technology's potential impact on computing is immense, said John Gustafson, a senior official of Sun's high productivity computing systems division.

While the speed of microprocessor chips, the "brains" of computers, has steadily increased every year, overall computer speed has remained constrained by the circuit board wiring under the chips.

Data communications between the chips is ten times slower than that on the chips themselves, experts say.

"This is the number one logjam. The chips have been going faster, but the wires aren't going faster," said Gustafson.

Industry experts said that Sun's discovery, if it is proven in development, could have a wide impact on the computer industry.

"It's very exciting technology. It has the potential to be a major advance in computer architecture," said Chris Willard, research vice president at IDC, a leading information technology consultant.

Even so, it will take some time for the company to bring their discovery into regular use.

Sun's researchers are wrestling with problems of excessive heat and possible interference of data flow between two chips that are joined directly together.

"We have proved it works in the lab," said Gustafson. However, he added, before bringing the technology into use in everyday computing, "there are some real uncertainties we have to work out."

SPACE.WIRE