Date: 28/12/2006

IBM gets a step closer in integrating optical communications inside a silicon chip

IBM clears the bottleneck of delaying the light inside the chip. The researchers at IBM have developed delay line made up of "micro ring resonators" built using popular CMOS chip fabrication process. These micro ring resonators can store 10 bits of optical information within an area of 0.03 square millimeters. This optical delay generating technology will speed up the research in using photon instead of electron to communicate the signal inside the chip across various blocks.
The simple advantage of speed and no Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) of optical communications will boost the processor performance to a new level. However, there is still lot of issues yet to be solved to make this technology commercially feasible.