True, but from my understanding of the optical/electronic interface (which is far from complete) generating laser pulses (which is required for data transmission (LED's simply don't cut it) isn't the problem. It's going from photons to electrons that's the slow process.
If they can do this (p2e) with this technology then they are will on the way to using photons in the data bus, either between chips or on the chip. Unfortunately, from the paper, it appears that this can only be used to generate light, so they have only one half of the equation.
Also from the picture they published, the doped tracks glow, so it's not even a point source. There seems to be a lot more promise vertical-cavity serface emitting lasers.
After reading both the Nature and BBC articles, I'm not sure that they are really talking about opto-electonics, although it might be used for such.
Instead I think they may be using this to emit the energy loss of silicon circuits in the visible spectrum, rather than IR.
As we all probably know, today's CPU's run extremely hot, just look at all the comments about the new Apple titanium notebook. Getting
rid of this excess as light instead would be an immense benefit. And would mean small faster CPU's without the need for a cyrogenic cooling system.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but from my understanding of the optical/electronic interface (which is far from complete) generating laser pulses (which is required for data transmission (LED's simply don't cut it) isn't the problem. It's going from photons to electrons that's the slow process.
If they can do this (p2e) with this technology then they are will on the way to using photons in the data bus, either between chips or on the chip. Unfortunately, from the paper, it appears that this can only be used to generate light, so they have only one half of the equation.
Also from the picture they published, the doped tracks glow, so it's not even a point source. There seems to be a lot more promise vertical-cavity serface emitting lasers.
After reading both the Nature and BBC articles, I'm not sure that they are really talking about opto-electonics, although it might be used for such.
Instead I think they may be using this to emit the energy loss of silicon circuits in the visible spectrum, rather than IR.
As we all probably know, today's CPU's run extremely hot, just look at all the comments about the new Apple titanium notebook. Getting rid of this excess as light instead would be an immense benefit. And would mean small faster CPU's without the need for a cyrogenic cooling system.