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According to New Scientist, NEC demonstrated laser communications chips capable of data transfers up to 25Gbps - a record for such processors, according to the company.

NEC built a semiconducting laser diode called

The data is carried between processors via optical fibres and, taken together, such a setup could provide a massive boost in computing power, possibly leading to the first petaflop computers. Such a system would be able to perform one thousand trillion calculations each second.

However, questions remain as to whether a petaflop-grade supercomputer constructed using this technology would even be financially viable, let alone how feasible it would be to cool and power such a machine.

NEC is confident that the potential applications for a supercomputer of this power would see it in demand. It expects such a system to be able to carry out simulations of the entire human body at a cellular level.