Future Lab: Moving Data at the Speed of Light

August 2nd, 2010 | Jason Lopez

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What is possible if we could greatly reduce the bottlenecks in the transfer of data? Electrons and copper wire have taken us far, but only so far. What lies beyond is light speed. Silicon photonics is the transmission of data using light, which can go much faster and farther. It unleashes many new possibilities inside and outside computer platforms. Photonics is very expensive but that appears to be changing. Dr. Mario Paniccia, Director of Intel’s Silicon Photonics Lab, says that with silicon photonics, “optical communications now connecting your laptop and your computer, your handheld, your TV – in the future all will be optically connected. All this data in the cloud, you can just simply plug a fiber into your PC, a fiber into your handheld, and you can move content and data around at enormously fast data rates.”

See photos on Flickr:

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