Cloud Computing: Intel rolls out silicon photonics for data centers

Grazed from Optics.org. Author: Editorial Staff.

Intel says it has started shipping silicon photonics products based around a hybrid indium phosphide/silicon laser, and says that it expects the technology to eventually feature “everywhere” in data centers. Officially launching the platform at this year’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel’s general manager of data centers Diane Bryant claimed that the Californian chip giant was the only company building its silicon photonics around a laser directly integrated into the material. “We are the first to light up silicon,” she said, adding that products had been shipping since June. “We integrate the laser light-emitting material, which is indium phosphide, onto the silicon and use lithography to define the laser, to align it with precision.”

Cost, reach and density advantage

Bryant says that this yields a cost advantage versus other approaches to silicon photonics, which can involve tricky manual alignment, as well as longer reach and higher density. But she admitted that it had taken Intel a long time – 16 years to be precise – to transfer the technology from its research laboratories and into a full-blown product…

“All good things take patience,” she said in her keynote address. Back in 2010, Intel’s Mario Paniccia told optics.org the discovery that silicon could act as an effective microcavity was a key achievement…

Read more from the source @ http://optics.org/news/7/8/30