Intel Silicon Photonics Chip Is World's Fastest (and Prettiest)

MIT's Tech Review <a href="has the scoop that Intel's wizards have come upwith a new chip entirely made out of silicon that "can encode 200 gigabits of data per second on a beam of light" versus the measly 100 Gbps that the fastest optical networks currently churn at-which aren't made of silicon. Which means they… » 7/02/08 11:29am 7/02/08 11:29am

IBM Unleashes Photonic Supercomputer... On a Chip

Modern supercomputers are still at least 100 times faster than the crappy laptop you bought a week ago, and electrons are to blame. Today, IBM introduced a way to speed up the action on regular silicon chips by replacing the wiring with pulses of light, a technology called—what else?—silicon photonics. This method… » 12/06/07 10:17am 12/06/07 10:17am

Intel Silicon Optical Modulator Hits 40Gbps (In Bed)

In case you didn't know, electrons are total crap. The future is in light beams; that is, photons. Chipmakers love their silicon, cheap and easy to manufacture at volume, so they are furiously researching ways to put photonic integrated circuits on silicon chips. The speed component of the integrated circuit is the… » 7/25/07 7:54pm 7/25/07 7:54pm