Advances in "Light Carryin" Silicon Chip Technology

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Research published Thursday by engineers at Stanford University in California details a newly invented silicon chip component that can break up a laser beam into billions of pieces of data.

The invention is described in the journal Nature. It solves a major difficulty in using light instead of electricity to carry data among chips in electronic devices, a move that could make chips much faster because light can carry data many times more quickly than electricity

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14195&hed=Profs+Casts+Light+on+Silicon

Harris and the team have created a silicon germanium modulator, which acts as a kind of light shutter that can break a laser beam into billions of bits of data per second. This modulator can selectively absorb or pass through beams of light, to distinguish bits -- or the ones and zeros -- of digital data. The modulator is an important component in a string of silicon chips that would have to be invented in order to make a silicon optical networking system.

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