Spyder Web

23

Kilkenny watched as a graphic depiction of his program’s performance unfolded on the computer screen before him. Every computer in existence was composed of two essential items, the physical hardware of the machine and the program, or operating system, which told the hardware how to function. Inside the MARC Cray supercomputer, the operating-system program that would one day earn him a doctorate battled to tame a computer simulation of Kelsey Newton’s revolutionary optoelectronic processor. The data showed his program to be stable and capable of managing the intricate flow of information within Newton’s radical design. Unfortunately, a simulation was all Nolan had to work with.

Kelsey had spent over two years designing her optical processor. Ten months of that time had been spent building this simulation, modeling in the computer how she believed her optical processor would behave. If her design worked, it would show chip manufacturers a way around the dead end that current computer processor designs were approaching. To date, each new generation of computer processor had been faster than the one that preceded it. This feat had been accomplished by increasing the number of circuits on the chip and decreasing the space between each of the circuits. As electronic circuits continued to get closer, the processors got faster and generated more heat, and heat destroys computer chips. If the current rate of circuit miniaturization continued, within two generations the cooling fans in personal computers would have to be replaced with refrigeration systems.

Kelsey’s design avoided this problem entirely by replacing electrical circuits (standard electronics) with optical circuits (optoelectronics). Instead of electrons racing about on a flat two-dimensional freeway of transistors, beams of light fired by an array of millions of tiny semiconductor lasers would pulse with information within a three-dimensional space. The same technology allowing a CD player to read information from a disc would provide the framework for computer designs more powerful than any machine in existence.

At this point, though, this entire experiment was still all theory, and it would continue to be theory until the prototype of the optical processor was up and running in the lab next door.

Kelsey, who was on sabbatical from her teaching duties at the university this term, had spent the last six weeks at a chip-fabrication facility, overseeing the creation of her processor. The materials and methods required to build her processor pushed conventional production techniques to their limits. Then again, Kelsey Newton never did anything the easy way.

The phone by Nolan’s workstation rang, calling him away from the colorful image cycling on the screen. ‘This is Nolan Kilkenny.’

‘Nolan, we’ve done it!’ Kelsey shouted back at him excitedly. ‘We got the impurities out of the polymer!’

In the simplest terms, the processor inside a computer was nothing more than a vast collection of switches. Each switch was either on or off. The more switches, or circuits, a processor had, the more complex the information it could handle. The core of Kelsey’s design rested on the use of a polymer, a chemically complex transparent plastic, to remember what position the processor’s switches were in. The polymer was a storage vessel that Kelsey called ‘a holographic memory.’ What made this greenish lump of transparent plastic valuable was that its molecular structure reacted when hit by various frequencies, or intensities, of laser light. In Kelsey’s design, if two beams of blue laser light intersected at any point within the polymer, that spot would react. This reaction was, in a sense, like turning a switch on.Different combinations of blue and red laser light on that same spot could either read the position of the switch or change the position of the switch. For this holographic memory to work reliably, the material had to be optically clear and free from any contamination or defects that would interfere with the laser beams. In eliminating the impurities in the polymer, Kelsey’s processor could now be built.

‘Fantastic! How soon before you can build the laser array?’

‘It’s in production as we speak. They’re going to fabricate five test units for us and, at a hundred grand a piece, we better not break any of them. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow with the prototypes.’

‘Everything will be ready and waiting. See you then.’

Two days later, Nolan picked up Kelsey from Metro Airport and drove her straight to MARC with the first five Newton processors. Both Nolan’s father and Grin stayed late, and they were waiting in Newton’s lab when Kelsey and Nolan arrived.

‘It’s show time,’ Nolan announced as he placed a wellsealed box on the stainless-steel lab bench.

‘You must be very excited, Kelsey,’ Sean Kilkenny commented enthusiastically.

‘To be honest, this is better than winning a Big Ten Championship.’

‘Personally, I’m trying to keep my enthusiasm in check until we actually get one of these going.’ Nolan sliced through the heavy plastic with his Swiss Army knife and carefully pried open the box. ‘I’ve been running on a model for six weeks, and I’d kind of like to sink my teeth into the real thing.’

‘I’ll just be glad to get you off the Cray,’ Grin said as he peered over Nolan’s shoulder at the five carefully wrapped processors. ‘You’ve seen hogging way too much time on my prime machine, time that I could have been selling to paying customers.’

Nolan let the dig slide. Grin knew full well that all his project-related time was funded by Kelsey’s very sizable grant for optoelectronic research.He pulled a black transparent bag from its foam packing and handed it to Newton. ‘This is your baby. Do the honors.’

Nervous with excitement, Kelsey broke the seal of the bag and pulled out the two-inch greenish square that was nearly half an inch thick. The face of the processor seemed to reflect within itself, giving an illusion of infinite depth, and the perimeter was ringed with gold pins that would connect the device to Newton’s experiment. The strange beauty of the optical processor silenced everyone as Kelsey held it in the light.

‘Here goes nothing,’ Kelsey said as she carefully pressed the processor into place. It snapped in perfectly, and Sean Kilkenny recorded the auspicious moment with his video camera.

Proudly, Kelsey turned to Nolan with a relieved smile. ‘Now it’s time for you to earn your doctorate.’

‘Damn, this is exciting, Kelsey!’ Nolan turned to face her. ‘You’ve created something that could totally change the computer world. Thanks for asking me to be a part of it.’

‘Nolan, you are the best programmer I know. I need you on this project.Without your timely E-mails, I would never have completed my simulation program.’

‘I’ve always thought you two made a good team,’ Sean declared with fatherly pride. ‘It didn’t matter whether it was a lemonade stand or a homecoming parade float, you two always got the job done and done well. I predict great things from this collaboration.’

Kelsey moved next to Nolan and threw her arm around his shoulder. ‘What do you say, partner, are you ready to kick some butt?’

‘Anything you say, Kelsey.’

The next morning, Nolan began testing the ITC cable that ran between Kelsey’s optoelectronic processor and the Cray computer. The ITC cable differed from normal types of wiring in that it was made of a very expensive superconducting material that, when chilled with liquid nitrogen, lost all electrical resistance and allowed greater amounts of information to flow across it. Given the known speed of the Cray and the theoretical speed of Kelsey’s processor, the ITC cable was the only means of handling communications between the two machines. Nolan’s tests involved sending a series of signals across the cable to verify that it was functioning properly. Once done, he could begin testing his operating system on the new processor.

After checking the cable connections, Nolan logged on to the Cray from his workstation in the lab and sent a signal to Kelsey’s processor. As the low-voltage signal began to flow, the experimental processor came on-line and the dormant Spyder became active.

Through the open ITC cable, the Spyder pieced together a picture of the electronic world it was now a part of. It ignored the data flowing from Newton’s experimental processor; the unusual patterns were unlike anything it had been programmed to encounter. Instead, it focused on searching through the Cray for a route to the outside world.

The MARC Cray was one of only five supercomputers located in southeastern Michigan that leased time to outside researchers. As part of Sean Kilkenny’s arrangement with the University of Michigan, this machine was part of the interuniversity very high speed Backbone Network Service, or vBNS network, which linked Michigan to several other research-oriented universities.

At 12:10, a graduate student from Michigan State University’s College of Engineering logged on to the supercomputer. The Spyder monitored her progress from inside the Cray’s memory, watching as communication protocols were confirmed, as passwords were verified, and, finally, as information began to flow between East Lansing and Ann Arbor.

The successful connection between the Cray and the outside world allowed the Spyder to wander freely inside the interuniversity computer network, where it found exactly what it was looking for: the switchboard for the network’s communications lines. Using the password pilfered from the MSU researcher, the Spyder logged on to the university’s Internet server and sent an encoded message to Roe’s E-mail address. The Spyder then logged off the network.