IBM researchers have fabricated a silicon device that's a significant advance in making practical optical interconnects.

December 22, 2006.
By forcing light to circle multiple times through ring-shaped structures carved into silicon, researchers at IBM have been able to delay the flow of light on a microchip. Being able to delay light is crucial for high-performance, ultrafast optical computers of the future that will process information using light and electrical signals.


It's easy to store electronic data in computer memory; light is harder to control. The new silicon device, described in this week's issue of Nature Photonics, is ten times smaller than those made in the past. It also works much better at high data speeds. "This work is approximately a factor of ten over the best achieved with [ring-shaped devices] so far," says Keren Bergman, an electrical-engineering professor at Columbia University.


Storing light on silicon is key for electronic-optical hybrid computers that researchers believe will be available a decade from now. In these computers, devices will compute using electrons but will move data to other devices and components using light--avoiding the use of copper wires or interconnects that tend to heat up at high computer frequencies....to be continous at Techreview.com (please clcik the link for further infomation.)