This was on ZDNet yesterday. A team at IBM has engineered a new chip, called the photonic silicon waveguide, able to slow down light to 1/300th of it’s normal speed. A slower speed opens the doors for optical computing because it allows a better precision while measuring the timing in the data.
UPDATE:Wired has a great piece about this too. Check it out!
Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.
A number of companies and university researchers are currently tinkering with ways to replace the electronic components inside computers, which ferry signals with electrons, withoptical technology.Optical equipment ferries data on photons, the smallest measure of light. Photons are far faster. More important, optical equipment generates less heat, curbing the growing problem of heat and power consumption.
The catch, however, is that until recently, creating opticalcomponents has been more of an art than a science. The components cost a lot to make and can’t be cranked out in the millions like silicon chips. Another factor: Optical parts are typically big, unlike silicon chips, which measure only a few millimeters on a side.
You can read the rest of the article here.
November 3rd, 2005 | General Science, Physics, Technology