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Intel researchers build laser on chip
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Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Cool article on Intel research into photonic technology.
Working with the basic material of computer chips, Intel Corp. researchers have constructed an all-silicon laser that could lead to computers one day harnessing light waves rather than electrical currents to shuttle data swiftly.
Today, lasers that power fast optical networks require exotic -- and expensive -- materials and are mainly used in vast communications networks. With everyday silicon, the capacity and efficiency of light waves could be used cheaply in much smaller environments.
As a result, the movement of data within computers would keep up with the ever-increasing speed of microprocessors, breaking through an increasingly problematic bottleneck that exists for users of complex programs, such as video editors, large businesses and governments.
Silicon lasers also could be mass produced, using the same equipment on which standard chips are made.
But silicon, the semiconductor that makes up computer memory and logic chips, has only recently been considered for use in photonics, or light-based technology -- and it promises to revolutionize that field as it did electronics.
"Once you have silicon as an optical material, then you can take advantage of this enormous (silicon) infrastructure that exists around the world," said Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab. "You can imagine starting to siliconize photonic devices, and maybe integrate photonics and electronics."
The Intel research, co-authored by Paniccia and posted on the journal Nature's Web site Wednesday, involved creating a laser with a single silicon chip. Like all lasers, it emitted a focused stream of light that ultimately could be manipulated to carry vast amounts of data at high speeds.
Laser beams are usually created by exciting atoms of polished crystal rods, gases or vapors, dyes or semiconductors with electricity or light. That boosts the atoms' electrons to higher energy levels. When they fall back, photons, the basic element of light, are released. The photons are then bounced back and forth as in an echo chamber before they're beamed out to create a concentrated light source.
With silicon, the situation is more complicated. Because of silicon's crystalline makeup, energy from stimulated electrons is released as heat and vibration. To make a laser, researchers instead rely on a weak but precise scattering of photons called the Raman effect.
Posted by: xwxjncoxwx
the raman effect? 
thank god they arn't talking about what happens after eating that soup :-X
its nice to see that Intel isn't going to just let AMD take over ^^ Compitition always makes better products!
Posted by: The Voice
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thank god they arn't talking about what happens after eating that soup :-X
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I think that's "Ramen" Noodles... ...And I don't want to know what effect they have on you.
This is where it starts getting Star Trek-ish. Remember those scenes where they have to repair the computers, and they opent a panel and you see these half inch thick "fiber optics" lines?
If this becomes a viable technology, the only metal wire needed in a PC will be the power supply feeds. You could run optic cable from each component directly to an "optic port" instead of a IDE or PCI, etc. incredibly efficient, and convenient. Plus it would allow all ports to be far, far closer to the CPU, as much as several inches in some cases, again increasing overall performance. Only catch is, how much time/energy does it take to convert the electric pulse to light when its made at one component, then convert it back to electricity for processing. Might not be worth the tradeoff.
{EDIT}
Makes you wonder, if they are telling people about it now, how long have they had it?
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