Intel signals computation at the speed of light

By Steve Malone

Posted on 13 Feb 2004 at 10:21

Intel scientists have claimed a breakthrough in the development of optical switches made of silicon. The company says it created a transistor like optical device which switched at over 1GHz.

The Intel team began by splitting a beam of infrared light into two. Then one of the beams was passed through a silicon device - silicon is transparent to infra red light. An electric charge generated through the device caused a 'phase shift' in the beam of light which when recombined with the second beam of light caused the resulting light beam to switch 'on' and 'off'. Intel envisages that this technology, when commercially developed can lead to a new generation of low cost fibre optic data connections between devices.

The significance is that the device has been built out of silicon rather than the more exotic materials which have been used to create optical switches up until now and brings the possibility of optical switching closer to low cost affordable devices. Intel is estimating that they can develop the technology to 10GHz and more.

'This is a significant step toward building optical devices that move data around inside a computer at the speed of light,' said Patrick Gelsinger, Intel's senior vice president and chief technology officer. 'It is the kind of breakthrough that ripples across an industry over time enabling other new devices and applications. 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.'