Intel Announces Laser Breakthrough

AdmiralWeirdbeard writes "Intel has just announced a breakthrough in laser technology allowing a continuous laser wave on a silicon chip. Apparently they devised a method to sap the interfering field of electrons previously generated in silicon by the lasers. Intel says that hardware exploiting the advance might begin appearing at the end of the decade."

Comments

Expensive?

[BeerCat]

From TFA: The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has created a chip containing eight continuous Raman lasers by using fairly standard silicon processes rather than the somewhat expensive materials and processes required for making lasers today.

OK, so I'm probably missing some major point here, but, define "expensive" for making lasers, given that there is a laser in every cheap £20 CD player, cheap £30 DVD player, cheap £5 laser pointer... Can't be that expensive, surely?