UIUC Researchers Create Light Emitting Transistor

thesilverbail writes "Researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated light emission from the base layer of a Bipolar Transistor. This discovery could be the beginning of an era in which photons are directed around a chip in much the same fashion as electrons have been maneuvered on conventional chips. It's reminiscent of the exciting days of the Miracle month November, 1947, when the transistor was first invented."

Comments

This doesn't seem to mean much

[Tau Zero]

First, there's no real magic here; the news release says that the transistor is "made from indium gallium phosphide and gallium arsenide."

What this means is that someone has taken the same materials which emit light as part of a single-junction device (a diode) and have also made them do so as part of a bi-junction device. While this looks like it might be a good way to integrate light emission with the control circuitry, it's not going to do anything to make them easier to integrate into large devices (silicon works for this because its oxide, SiO2, is a pretty good insulator while gallium doesn't do anything so convenient).

I will admit that it's clever, and someone may find some unobvious way of turning it into a useful device (massively parallel optical interconnects?), but there's just no way that this is going to be slapped onto the next Intel or AMD die. It especially will not replace aluminum or copper interconnects between parts of one processor.