IBM Creates Commercially Viable, Electronic-Photonic Integrated Chip

An anonymous reader writes "After more than a decade of research, and a proof of concept in 2010, IBM Research has finally cracked silicon nanophotonics (or CMOS-integrated nanophotonics, CINP, to give its full name). IBM has become the first company to integrate electrical and optical components on the same chip, using a standard 90nm semiconductor process. These integrated, monolithic chips will allow for cheap chip-to-chip and computer-to-computer interconnects that are thousands of times faster than current state-of-the-art copper and optical networks. Where current interconnects are generally measured in gigabits per second, IBM's new chip is already capable of shuttling data around at terabits per second, and should scale to peta- and exabit speeds."

Comments

More info

[Geoffrey.landis]

The article is remarkably lacking in technical details.

This article from two years ago is a little more detailed: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4211151/IBM-debuts-CMOS-silicon-nanophotonics
or this press release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33115.wss

Re:More info

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing IBM may have pioneered is doing it on Silicon. Infinera uses Indium Phosphide.

What they've done hardly sounds like a small thing. They've gone from lab-scale to commercial-scale, at least in the lab (if that makes sense).

They're not the first to make this kind of chip, but they've advanced the state of the art. There aren't many times when a completely new invention comes out, most of the time it's baby steps like this.