Intel silicon laser breakthrough
p2pnet.net News:- Intel says its work on the first continuous silicon laser to allow the amplification of photons within silicon material to create a laser output beam is based on “breakthrough” research.
“99 percent of the world is still copper,” Dr Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s photonics technology lab is quoted as saying by Tom’s Hardware.
Paniccia says the Chipzilla results are just a few weeks old and it’s too early to predict when the technology could be introduced into the mass market. ” It’s a matter of cost and integration,” he said, although the goal is to transfer the research into commercial products “by the end of the decade”.
Potential applications of the silicon laser could include lasers on a chip for telecommunications and networking with high bandwidths, says the story. “We think 10 Gbit per second is a start,” Paniccia states. Medical devices using high-frequency lasers could become much smaller and cheaper in the future.
Intel’s laser comprises the light source, waveguides and light splitter, a modulator, light detection, low-cost assembly and intelligence to combine the technology with CMOS on a chip, says Tom’s Hardware, adding:
“The company has a long way to go until networks and communications could take advantage of the research result. So far, the company still has to complete all pieces of its building blocks and work on the efficiency of the silicon laser: According to Paniccia, the announced silicon laser creates an output of eight milliwatts and has an efficiency of about five percent.”
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See:-
still copper – New Intel laser tech could bring photonics to the masses, Tom’s Hardware, February 16, 2005
