According to Moore’s Law, the overall processor capabilities for computers will double every two years. This means that the overall data we use will also increase at an exponential rate. Imagine the possibilities and breakthroughs society can make with all of that data.
But there is one problem and it goes back to the processor itself. Processors, built with the typical and simple electrical input-output model, are reaching their limits. They cannot deal with large amounts of information processing.
But this is where photonic research comes into play. In a recent discovery by researchers from UC Santa Barbara, Caltech and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EFPL), silicon photonics may
provide the answer.
In normal fiber optical transmissions, information can flow much more efficiently, but it too has its problems. The explosion of data puts stresses on each silicon photonic chip. A simple solution would be to add more laser colors in the transmission process, however adding more lasers is even more inefficient, according to John Bowers, who is the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology at UC Santa Barbara and directs the campus’s Institute for Energy Efficiency.
A technology called “optical frequency clouds” provides a new solution. The name comes from the equally spaced frequencies of laser light. When you plot it, there are spikes and dips that resemble a hair comb. However, generating combs required bulky, expensive equipment. But Bowers’ team has demonstrated the smallest comb generator in the world, which resolves all these problems, by using an integrated photonics approach. The simple structure leads to a significant reduction of scale, power, and cost. The whole setup now fits in a package smaller than a match box, whose overall price and power consumption are smaller than previous systems.
Sources:
Shift in how we build computers
Research citation: Boqiang Shen et al. Integrated turnkey soliton microcombs. Nature, 2020; 582 (7812): 365 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2358-x