Light Emitting Silicon Steps It Up

h4mm3r writes "STMicroelectronics plans to announce a breakthrough on Monday in light-emitting silicon that could lead to a new generation of more powerful computing processors and more efficient automobile components as well as potentially higher-speed optical data-transmission systems. (gotta register, free yadda yadda)"

Comments

Re:Very challenging to do

[Drakula]

You have a very good point.

However, the fact that Si has an indirect bandgap means it will never be as efficient as its direct gap brethren, such as GaAs.

The addition of a rare earth element such as Erbium increase the light output substantially as you say. However, the emission spectrum is very broad and likely undesired. A rare earth dopant and a resonant cavity structure however would be a good candidate for efficient emission.

New way of doing case mods?

[athlon02]

No more need to buy cases with neon lights in them... just grab the latest motherboard from your favorite mobo manufacturer and voila :)

But in all seriousness, after I saw the article a while back (on slashdot) with something about optical traces on a motherboard in about 5 years from now, it had me very intrigued. I mean if you can shave a few nanoseconds from every bus cycle that's gotta be worth 10% increase in performance eventually. Especially on a clawhammer/sledgehammer where you've eliminated the north bridge part of the chipset.