Silicon photonics' terabit bandwidth makes it the interconnect of the future

[HEXUS]

Fiber optics to the rescue in the race to build faster and faster interconnects?

Read more.

[awm]

Cool stuff, although reality could provide a cruel damper when it actually goes to a real fab on silicon intended for real use. I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually although were other funny stuff like quantum computing will be then is a big question.

[roddines]

I saw this about 2 months ago somewhere on the net. Here is the best place to find out about it.
http://blogs.intel.com/research/2007...modulator.html

I think Intel would pretty much know they can make it before they would publicly declare it. So I think we will "see" it soon enough (although someone in the blog asks the question about an equally high performing optical detector/demodulator which seems to be unanswerred). It will at least intially be expensive and probably relegated to the supercomputing arena eventually we may see its use in high speed interconnections on existing and new fibers throught the backbone of the internet. The "see" being emphasised because most of us will not ever actually see it as they will be restricted to the higher layers of networking that most people will never see or experience directly. I guess what we will see hopefully in the longer term is reduced bandwidth costs and eventually that will allow cost effectively to deliver higher "usable" bandwidth to the home/business.

It is interesting that the speed of 40Gbps is not new but just new on the cheaper silicon substrate without needing the more costly and rare exotic materials they have previously used to achieve these high speeds.