Boffins in South Korea have come up with a networking router which transmits data at nearly 40 gigabytes per second.

According to Technology Review the technique, developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology uses cheap commodity chips, such as those made by Intel and Nvidia, in high-performance routers, in place of custom-made hardware.

Software developed by the researchers could also serve as a testbed for novel networking protocols that might eventually replace the ancient ones currently in play. The current system means that commercial software routers from companies such as Vyatta can typically only attain transfer data at speeds of up to three gigabytes per second which makes the router a bit of a bottleneck.

Sue Moon, leader of the lab in which the research was conducted and her students Sangjin Han and Keon Jang developed software called PacketShader which they wanted to get a PC router to 10 gigabytes per second. Once they worked out the principle they were able to push it to 40.

PacketShader uses a computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) to help process packets of data sent across a network.