28 July 2010
Light beams to replace electronic signals for future computer design?
Intel has announced a major breakthrough in the research of light beams that can replace electrons and carry data in and around computers.
The company claims to have developed a research prototype, representing the world's first silicon based optical data connection with integrated lasers.
According to Intel, the link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today's copper technology; up to 50Gb/s. This is the equivalent of an entire hd movie being transmitted each second.
Traditionally, computer components are connected to each other using copper cables or traces on circuit boards. Due to the signal degradation that comes with using metals such as copper to transmit data, these cables have a limited maximum length which limits the design of computers.Processors, memory and other components are required to be placed just inches from each other.
Intel has been researching how to replace these connections with extremely thin and light optical fibres capable of transfering much more data over far longer distances.
The breakthough could radically change the way computers are designed and altering the way data centres are architected.
Silicon photonics could have applications across the computing industry. At these data rates it would be possible to design a wall sized 3d display for home entertainment and videoconferencing with an extremely high resolution.
And future data centres or supercomputers could use components spread throughout a building or even an entire campus, communicating with each other at high speed.
Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer and director of Intel Labs, said: "This achievement of the world's first 50Gb/s silicon photonics link with integrated hybrid silicon lasers marks a significant achievement in our long term vision of 'siliconising' photonics and bringing high bandwidth, low cost optical communications in and around future pcs, servers, and consumer devices."
The 50Gb/s Silicon Photonics Link prototype is the result of a multi-year silicon photonics research agenda. It is composed of a silicon transmitter and a receiver chip, each integrating devices such as Intel's Hybrid Silicon Laser (co-developed with the University of California in 2006) as well as high-speed optical modulators and photodetectors.
The transmitter chip is composed of four such lasers, whose light beams each travel into an optical modulator that encodes data onto them at 12.5Gb/s. The four beams are then combined and output to a single optical fibre for a total data rate of 50Gb/s. At the other end of the link, the receiver chip separates the four optical beams and directs them into photo detectors, which convert data back into electrical signals.
Intel researchers are already working to increase the data rate by scaling the modulator speed as well as increase the number of lasers per chip, providing a path to future terabit/s optical links – rates fast enough to transfer a copy of the entire contents of a typical laptop in one second.
Author
Chris Shaw
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.intel.com
Companies
Intel Corporation
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