Production of Photon Processors Expected in 2006

ThinSkin writes "Photon processors that transmit data via light, not electrons, are slated to enter production in mid-2006, ExtremeTech reports. Headed by a UCLA professor and a Nobel Prize winner, startup Luxtera claims that its optical modulator clocks in at 10-GHz, tens times that of Intel's optical modulator researchers talked about last year. Since the optical module exists as its own entity, it will require a standard CMOS processes to integrate the optical waveguides. Luxtera has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop this technology."

Comments

Re:Error In The Article

[PxM]

I think you meant to say electricty is light. This is somewhat right but not exactly. Light /is/ made up of electromagnetic fields and the electric force between charges /is/ transmitted by photons, but they are two seperate ideas. Modern quantum physics has electricity sent via virtual photons while normal light is sent by real photons. Real photons involve both an electric field and a magnetic field perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of the wave propogation. The reason fiber optics transmissions are "faster" is because we can send multiple signals on different wavelengths over the same line without them interfering with each other two much. We can't do this with normal electric signals because high frequency electric signals start acting strangly since metal wires can no longer be though as resistors but now have to be modeled as inductors too.

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