Another article, same subject:
Intel Claims Breakthrough in Silicon Optical Products
Wednesday, Febuary 11, 2004 01:21 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel Corp. (INTC, news) is claiming a major breakthrough in using silicon to make optical components, a development that the company believes will lead to dramatic reductions in the price of high-speed data communications.
The chip maker said it has succeeded in fabricating a silicon modulator -- a key device needed to send data along fiber-optic cabling -- that operates at a speed of one gigahertz. That is roughly 50 times faster than similar devices that have been fabricated so far out of silicon, the company said.
Modulators and other optical components are now typically made using such esoteric materials as indium phosphide, lithium niobate and gallium arsenide. Components made from those materials are costly to produce in high volumes.
So researchers from many companies for years have been trying to replace them with products made from silicon, an effort Intel calls "silicon photonics." Before Intel's new component, the prior speed record for a silicon modulator had been 20 megahertz, the company said.
Intel's claim of reaching one gigahertz -- which roughly translates into the ability to send one billion bits a second down a single glass fiber -- provides evidence that companies could eventually use such components in commercial networking products, which now transmit up to 10 billion bits of data a second or more.
"This was probably the most significant barrier to doing silicon photonics," said Mario Paniccia, director of the Intel research effort. "We believe we have broken that barrier."
Intel's developments are being reported Wednesday in a paper in the journal Nature.
Products based on Intel's research are years away from the market. But the company hopes that optical communications devices that now cost $1,000 to $2,000 will eventually be priced as low as $5 to $10, making it possible to add much faster communications to a wide array of computer products, Mr. Paniccia said. |
