Sydney, Jan 22 (IANS) The invention of a new laser will make faster and cheaper computers possible.
“The on-chip light source will be key to enabling the simultaneous transmission of multiple data channels either on-chip or between chips in a single optical fibre, each at a different wavelength,” says David Moss, associate professor, University of Sydney.

“Currently information on a chip is shuffled around using electronic signals over copper wires, or interconnects. We know that metal is prone to ‘choking’ on the bandwidth bottleneck,” says Moss.

With society’s demands for even faster technology, ultrafast on-chip and chip-to-chip optical data communications are important. It’s clear that more efficient methods to transmit vast amounts of data around circuit boards are needed to keep up with these requirements.

Though multiple wavelength sources are already known, the team has developed them on a chip that, in principle, can not only be integrated with silicon computer chips (i.e. CMOS) but can also be fabricated using the same methods, said a Sydney release.

The device, based on high index doped silica glass, is low loss and has a high degree of manufacturability and design flexibility.

These findings were recently published in Nature Photonics.

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