Intel, UC collaborate on silicon laser chip
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Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 04 Oct 2006 16:37
Corporate, academic alliance reaches breakthrough
A new silicon chip uses light instead of wire to transmit data. That according to a team of researchers from Intel and University of California, Santa Barbara, who believes the hybrid silicon/laser chip could drive silicon photonics into wider use in computers and data centers.
This innovation "Highlights how industry and academia can work together to advance the state of science and technology," says John Bowers, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCSB.
The joint research team was able to combine the light-emitting properties of indium phosphide with the light-routing capabilities of silicon into a single hybrid chip. The advantage is in cost and broader use in industry: “This could bring low-cost, terabit-level optical ‘data pipes’ inside future computers and help make possible a new era of high-performance computing applications," says Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s Photonics Technology Lab. "We believe dozens, maybe even hundreds of hybrid silicon lasers could be integrated with other silicon photonic components onto a single silicon chip.”
The world’s first electrically-powered hybrid silicon laser uses standard silicon manufacturing processes. This breakthrough overcomes one of the last obstacles to producing low-cost, high-bandwidth silicon photonics devices.
The pairing of Intel and UCSB is a “dream team,” Intel being a world leader in silicon innovation, while Engineering at UC Santa Barbara is considered a leader in bioengineering, chemical and computational engineering, materials science, nanotechnology, optics and physics. UCSB faculty includes five faculty Nobel Laureates.
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