“Provides enormous cost-benefits and advantage over traditional photonic systems”
A pair of breakthroughs in the field of silicon photonics by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Micron Technology Inc. could allow for the trajectory of exponential improvement in microprocessors that began nearly half a century ago—known as Moore’s Law—to continue well into the future, allowing for increasingly faster electronics, from supercomputers to laptops to smartphones.
The research team, led by CU-Boulder researcher Milos Popovic, an assistant professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering, developed a new technique that allows microprocessors to use light, instead of electrical wires, to communicate with transistors on a single chip, a system that could lead to extremely energy-efficient computing and a continued skyrocketing of computing speed into the future.
Popovic and his colleagues created two different optical modulators—structures that detect electrical signals and translate them into optical waves—that can be fabricated within the same processes already used in industry to create today’s state-of-the-art electronic microprocessors. The modulators are described in a recent issue of the journal Optics Letters.
First laid out in 1965, Moore’s Law predicted that the size of the transistors used in microprocessors could be shrunk by half about every two years for the same production cost, allowing twice as many transistors to be placed on the same-sized silicon chip. The net effect would be a doubling of computing speed every couple of years.
The projection has held true until relatively recently. While transistors continue to get smaller, halving their size today no longer leads to a doubling of computing speed. That’s because the limiting factor in microelectronics is now the power that’s needed to keep the microprocessors running. The vast amount of electricity required to flip on and off tiny, densely packed transistors causes excessive heat buildup.
“The transistors will keep shrinking and they’ll be able to continue giving you more and more computing performance,” Popovic said. “But in order to be able to actually take advantage of that you need to enable energy-efficient communication links.”
Microelectronics also are limited by the fact that placing electrical wires that carry data too closely together can result in “cross talk” between the wires.
In the last half-dozen years, microprocessor manufacturers, such as Intel, have been able to continue increasing computing speed by packing more than one microprocessor into a single chip to create multiple “cores.” But that technique is limited by the amount of communication that then becomes necessary between the microprocessors, which also requires hefty electricity consumption.
Using light waves instead of electrical wires for microprocessor communication functions could eliminate the limitations now faced by conventional microprocessors and extend Moore’s Law into the future, Popovic said.
Optical communication circuits, known as photonics, have two main advantages over communication that relies on conventional wires: Using light has the potential to be brutally energy efficient, and a single fiber-optic strand can carry a thousand different wavelengths of light at the same time, allowing for multiple communications to be carried simultaneously in a small space and eliminating cross talk.
Optical communication is already the foundation of the Internet and the majority of phone lines. But to make optical communication an economically viable option for microprocessors, the photonics technology has to be fabricated in the same foundries that are being used to create the microprocessors. Photonics have to be integrated side-by-side with the electronics in order to get buy-in from the microprocessor industry, Popovic said.
“In order to convince the semiconductor industry to incorporate photonics into microelectronics you need to make it so that the billions of dollars of existing infrastructure does not need to be wiped out and redone,” Popovic said.
Last year, Popovic collaborated with scientists at MIT to show, for the first time, that such integration is possible. “We are building photonics inside the exact same process that they build microelectronics in,” Popovic said. “We use this fabrication process and instead of making just electrical circuits, we make photonics next to the electrical circuits so they can talk to each other.”
In two papers published last month in Optics Letters with CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Jeffrey Shainline as lead author, the research team refined their original photonic-electronic chip further, detailing how the crucial optical modulator, which encodes data on streams of light, could be improved to become more energy efficient. That optical modulator is compatible with a manufacturing process—known as Silicon-on-Insulator Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor, or SOI CMOS—used to create state-of-the-art multicore microprocessors such as the IBM Power7 and Cell, which is used in the Sony PlayStation 3.
The Latest Bing News on:
World Wide Web
- Tree farmer finds evidence of Wood Wide Web in Ohioon April 25, 2024 at 10:00 pm
An Ohio tree farmer believes he's documented evidence of the existence of the interconnection of forest plants via fungal networks on his property.
- Mother trees and socialist forests: is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?on April 23, 2024 at 2:36 am
In the past 10 years the idea that trees communicate with and look after each other has gained widespread currency. But have these claims outstripped the evidence?
- World Wide Web of Spiderson April 15, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder ...
- Solution to Evan Birnholz’s March 31 crossword, ‘World Wide Web’on March 31, 2024 at 5:59 am
You might need some assistance from (where else?) the World Wide Web to confirm what you’re looking for, but the last two letters of each webpage indicate which country the webpage is supposedly ...
- Looking back at the chip that changed how we accessed the World Wide Web, 30 years onon March 30, 2024 at 5:01 pm
It's a far cry from the buttery smooth connections we have grown used to today – but indeed our our first interfacing with the World Wide Web was through a dial-up connection that boasted ...
- 19 Remnants of the Early World Wide Web That Are Still Lefton March 20, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The early World Wide Web was the Internet in its youth, with pixelated graphics, MIDI music, and Geocities charm. This era, a pivotal moment in history, birthed a transformative technology that ...
- From AI assistants to Big Tech breakup: World Wide Web inventor's top predictions as it turns 35on March 12, 2024 at 12:18 am
The World Wide Web officially turns 35 Tuesday, marking a major milestone in the development of modern technology. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989 while ...
- The Internet gives rise to the World Wide Webon November 27, 2023 at 12:32 pm
Over the next year or two, the proposal was circulated and revised, resulting in an initial program being developed that was dubbed the World Wide Web. At least one expert has called the Web a ...
- The World Wide Webon June 26, 2017 at 7:15 am
Berners-Lee's vision of a global web of linked information was soon dubbed the World Wide Web. In 1992, Berners Lee designed a World Wide Web browser and distributed it for free. In November of ...
- What is the world wide web?on September 2, 2014 at 5:20 pm
Many people think that the internet and the world wide web are the same thing. While they are closely linked, they are very different things. PRESENTER: Often when you visit a website, the website ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
World Wide Web
[google_news title=”” keyword=”World Wide Web” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
The Latest Bing News on:
Faster electronics
- Molecular electronics: what will future gadgets be like?on April 26, 2024 at 6:58 am
The discovery that won the latest Nobel Prize in physics seems far away from our life, but one day everything could change with the arrival of molecular gadgets. We've tried to look into the future.
- 7 best fast chargers for all your devices in UAE, for 2024on April 24, 2024 at 10:00 am
and the brick is compatible with virtually all electronics, like tablets, notebooks, phones and accessories. Reviewers say it’s reliable and fast, but tends to get warm during extended charging ...
- Minnesota electronics recycling bill stalls in Senateon April 24, 2024 at 9:20 am
A Minnesota electronics recycling bill, HF3566, has reportedly stalled in the Senate, according to Fox 9.
- Peso Pluma Electrifies at Private Club Gig in New York for Sony Electronicson April 24, 2024 at 8:44 am
Barely 48 hours after playing to nearly 100,000 people at Coachella, Peso Pluma rocked a private concert in New York for Sony Electronics.
- Samsung 9th Gen V-NAND enters mass production: 33% faster than 8th Gen V-NANDon April 23, 2024 at 9:43 pm
Samsung announces mass production for its 1Tb triple-level cell (TLC) 9th-Gen vertical NAND (V-NAND), with 33% more performance over 8th-Gen V-NAND.
- Software for motor drive development supports faster time to marketon April 22, 2024 at 5:14 am
To help optimize the settings for field-oriented control (FOC), the latest version of Toshiba’s MCU Motor Studio (MMS v3.0) introduces a new technique for estimating rotor position based on flux ...
- High-Resolution Single Tube Readeron April 18, 2024 at 8:58 pm
Measuring just 66 x 53.5 x 51.5 millimetres – the rugged new tube reader features a high-resolution camera with super-fast electronics capable of reading 2D barcodes from any currently available tube ...
- American pandemic savings have depleted faster than other countries. Is that good or bad?on April 17, 2024 at 6:28 am
Mohammed El-Erian took to social media on Wednesday to post a chart, drawing on International Monetary Fund research, showing that the U.S. has ...
- Quantum electronics: Charge travels like light in bilayer grapheneon April 16, 2024 at 9:08 am
An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has demonstrated experimentally that electrons in naturally occurring double-layer graphene move like particles without any mass, in ...
- Small Business Week: Spirit Electronics Small Business OSAT Grows Around Semiconductor Desert Oasison April 16, 2024 at 8:49 am
Large-scale commercial manufacturing is making news with new fabs, and supporting businesses like outsourced semiconductor assembly and test provider Spirit Electronics see opportunity for significant ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Faster electronics
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Faster electronics” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]