when you think of light traveling down some kind of narrow channel which I know
you do all the time you probably think of high-speed internet connections
telephone lines or even those pre-lit Christmas trees but did you know that
Optical connections are actually taking the place of traditional metal traces in
actual computer chips this field is called silicon photonics and it's not
some kind of gimmicky speculative technology products that use silicon
photonics are already being deployed in data centers by the millions to help
keep up with how much pressure we're increasingly putting on cloud systems
these days especially considering how rapidly AI is expanding the basic idea
is to use photons instead of electrons to move data around the best part is
that chip makers are manufacturing the means to do so directly onto silicon
Wafers meaning that you don't need costly exotic materials in order to pull
this off silicon photonics uses wave guides that the light can move through
as well as freaking laser beams as a light Source these hybrid silicon lasers
are made from both silicon and other semiconductors such as indium and
gallium compounds so they can be built directly onto the chip obviating the
need for extra laser equipment outside the chip which can be costly this
technology has already been in use for a few years in transceivers that convert
electrical signals to and from Optical ones you plug them into a server and use
fiber optic cable to connect to another server elsewhere in a data center a to
several kilometers away a piece of tech that's also proven useful for supporting
current 5G networks but there's been a more recent development that might make
those external transceivers Obsolete and we'll tell you about it right after we
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today by clicking the link below instead of relying on a separate transceiver to
handle the actual photonics part of the chain recent work has looked more at
integrating silicon photonics directly onto a chip package in 2022 Intel showed
off a laser setup that used tiny micro rings to save enough space to fit the
actual photonics next to the die with each ring producing different light
wavelengths allowing more data to be transferred than if you just used a
single wavelength Intel also revealed a chip they had been working on for DARPA
in 2023 that used Optical chiplets these
chiplets sit on the same package as the actual compute die and are responsible
for doing the conversions between electrical and Optical so you'd be
connecting fiber optics directly to these chiplets again eliminating the
need for external transceivers when this Tech hits the marketplace but beyond the
cost advantages of moving photonics as close to the compute die as possible we
might need silicon photonics more and more as the years go by as our bandwidth
needs just continue to grow there's a good chance we'll start hitting the
limits of what's possible with standard metal traces in terms of power or data
Integrity the thinking is that it could be cheaper to use silicon photonics
instead of trying to find ways to shove more and more data down a metal trace
and that photonics could offer a superior error rate to traditional
Electronics but silicon photonics isn't just about ensuring the cloud can
continue to deliver fine YouTube videos like this one to your screen because the
general idea is put Optical technology into silicon it has other applications
such as liar for self-driving cars Healthcare Diagnostics that involve
shooting light into tissues and even better sensors for AR and VR headsets
it's unclear if silicon photonics will have a big role to play in home PCS at
some point but if you really want Optical Tech and your personal rig in
the meantime you could always just put in a Blu-ray Drive they're not dead yet
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