Pollsters at the IBM are working on the practical optical interconnects for some time and they have come up with a silicon device that delays the flow of light, by passing light to circles (resonators) numerous occasions (60 to 70 times) through round arrangements shaped into silicon, on a microchip (silicon-oxide layer) that can help in producing high-end and ultra fast optical computers in the future. This is quite the same process (silicon wafers) that was used earlier to produce microprocessors at the IBM.
The new silicon device is almost ten times smaller than the conventional devices that can easily store electronic data in computer memory and works a lot better at high data speeds.
Keren Bergman, an electrical-engineering professor at Columbia University said,
This work is approximately a factor of ten over the best achieved with (ring-shaped devices) so far.
The future electronic-optical hybrid computers will avoid using copper wires or interconnects, as they burst out at high computer frequencies and defers performance, and use electrons but, at the same time, will shift records to different systems and modules using light.
The assimilation of numerous rings supports greatly to build up the delay, such as, by connecting the 56 rings to a common silicon wire about half a nanosecond long delay can be achieved that allows storing 10 optical bits at a 20 gigabits per second data speed. The IBM researchers are producing 12 micrometers rings that help them housing about 100 ring resonators into less than one-tenth of a square millimeter area, which is a great achievement.
Bergman says,
It is very close to the kinds of densities you would like to have on chip for optical interconnects. This is a major step towards making optical interconnects a reality.
If everything works according to the plan, the hot mechanism may possibly start manufacturing the optical interconnects in computers within the approaching decade.
Via: technologyreview
