Posted on 07/30/2010 12:19:52 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
On Tuesday, Intel demonstrated the world’s first practical data connection using silicon photonics - a 50 gigabit per second optical data connection built around an electrically pumped hybrid silicon laser. They achieved the 50 gigabit/s data rate by multiplexing 4 12.5 gigabit/s wavelengths into one fiber - wavelength division multiplexing. Intel dubbed its demo the “50G Silicon Photonics Link.”
Fiber optic data transmission isn’t anything new - it’s the core of what makes the internet as we know it today possible. What makes Intel’s demonstration unique is that they’ve fabricated the laser primarily out of a low-cost, mass-produceable, highly understood material - silicon.
For years, chip designers and optical scientists alike have dreamt about the possibilities of merging traditional microelectronics and photonics. Superficially, one would expect it to be easy - after all, both fundamentally deal with electromagnetic waves, just at different frequencies (MHz and GHz for microelectronics, THz for optics).
On one side, microelectronics deals with integrated circuits and components such as transistors, copper wires, and the massively understood and employed CMOS manufacturing process. It’s the backbone of microprocessors, and at the core of conventional computing today. Conversely, photonics employes - true to its name - photons, the basic unit of light. Silicon photonics is the use of optical systems that use silicon as the primary optical medium, instead of other more expensive optical materials. Eventually, photonics has the potential to supplant microelectronics with optical analogues of traditional electrical components - but that’s decades away.
Until recently, successfully integrating the two was a complex balance of manufacturing and leveraging photonics only when it was feasible.
(Excerpt) Read more at anandtech.com ...
fyi
What’s different about Intel’s demonstration is that the lasers themselves are hybrid silicon.
As for the detector - bias a similar stack of components the other way, and you’re done.
Yes, but when will there be something worth watching on my TV? Sorry, just not upbeat today. Fast junk is still just junk.
Such a fat pipe that everything else in your system becomes the bottleneck. For reference, that’s a thousand maximum-quality Blu-ray movies going simultaneously. Or, rather, an entire max-quality 2-hour Blu-ray movie transferred in about seven seconds.
I want one.
No, make that three.
No problemo. I will install fiber throughout the house and open up 34 Lambda’s.
Zero Bottleneck.
Fascinating stuff. I’ve been a software geek for years, and remain amazed at what some of the hardware guys can develop.
...and the problem moves down the line, but this is the future and the lessor pieces of the hardware will catch....So, COOL!
A roger that. Lots of stuff is advertised and the reader in most cases does not understand the underlining technologies.
DANG...beam me up Scotty.
OK, so now a server-class machine can send a lot more stuff more quickly. I don't think these are intended for home use.
Youtube:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.