Originally published November 29 2005
Discovery to advance optical networking and transform computers
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Stanford engineers discovered how to switch a beam of laser light on and off 100 billion times a second. This advancement could interconnect computer chips at very high data rates and reorganize computers for better performance.
A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to switch a beam of laser light on and off up to 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry.
The group used a standard chip-making process to design a central component of optical networking gear that is potentially more than 10 times as fast as the highest-performance commercial products available today.
Such an advance could accelerate the decline in the cost of optical networking and transform computers by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates.
The device reported by the team, called a modulator or solid-state shutter, could also have a powerful effect on the telecommunications industry, which is already being transformed by the falling cost of optical fiber networks.
Constructed from silicon and germanium, the device alternately blocks and transmits light from a separate continuous-wave laser beam, making it possible to split the beam into a stream of 1's and 0's.
The effect, known as a quantum-confined Stark effect, had been demonstrated before, but had not been expected in germanium, a material that is compatible with the industry's silicon-based manufacturing technologies.
"What we achieved is somewhat surprising," said James S. Harris, a Stanford University electrical engineering professor who is a member of the research group.
The research project was supported by the Intel Corporation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon.
Intel has been intensely interested in producing optical communications components with standard chip-making tools, for both networking and computer communications applications.
Theodore I. Kamins, a quantum materials specialist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, also contributed to the research effort.
"They've made a big leap," said Mario Paniccia, director of the Intel Photonics Technology Laboratory.
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