Intel Chip Innovation Could Eliminate Data Jams

chips could eliminate data traffic jams inside and between computers

Feb 11, 2004
By Daniel Sorid

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. researchers said on Wednesday they have found a novel way to use the silicon building blocks of computer chips to switch light on and off at high speeds, an advance that could eliminate data traffic jams inside and between computers.

The technique, to be published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, could thrust silicon into the heart of high-speed fiber-optic communications, which to date has relied on more exotic materials like indium phosphide and gallium arsenide, experts said.

While silicon had previously been used to switch light, Intel said it has shown that it can be done at speeds of more than one billion cycles per second, more than 50 times faster than previous demonstrations.

"This is a significant step toward building optical devices that move data around inside a computer at the speed of light," Intel Chief Technology Officer Patrick Gelsinger said in a statement.

"It could help make the Internet run faster, build much faster high performance computers and enable high bandwidth applications like ultra-high definition displays or vision recognition systems," he said.

Intel said it has built a silicon-based modulator, a device that takes laser light and pulses it onto fiber-optic cables at very high speeds. Those pulses become the data that form the basis for fiber-optic communications.

"Despite its success as an electronic material, silicon has received rather modest attention as an optical material," said Graham Reed, a physicist at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. "But that may be about to change."

Mario Paniccia, director of silicon photonics research at Intel, said he expected his lab to be able to quickly increase the speed at which the silicon devices can pulse light, thus increasing the rate at which data can be transmitted.

Because the device is made of silicon, Paniccia said chip designers might one day be able to build fiber-optic communications capability into the core of the computer, the microprocessor, truly blurring the worlds of computing and communication.

In the nearer term, however, the technology is more likely to appear in products that can communicate between circuit boards and between computers, he said.

"We hope that this technology makes its way into products by the end of the decade," he said.

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