Blended chip hits fast forward
Luxtera, a small start-up based on technology pioneered at the California Institute of Technology, has a new class of silicon chips that blur the line between electronic computing and optical communications.
The chips, which contain both traditional electronic circuits and ultra-thin conduits for laser light, herald the potential to blend the low-cost manufacturing prowess of the semiconductor world with the ultra high-speed potential of laser optical networking.
The convergence of the two technologies is expected to have an impact on the computing and communications industries, both in the design of future computers and on drastically less expensive networks that will make applications of such fibre optic networks to homes commercially viable.
"This is the opening of a new field," said Alan Huang, a physicist who pioneered optical communications research at Bell Laboratories during the 1980s. "This falls exactly between two technologies."
Luxtera, which is based in Carlsbad, California, says it plans to introduce chips that make inexpensive 10 gigabit office networks possible by April 2006. The 10 Gb network would be 1000 times faster than those of today.
Luxtera is the first company to announce commercial plans for all-in-one chips. However, Intel has already made several research announcements in the field, and a number of industry executives have said that other companies are working on similar products.
The Luxtera announcement is a significant advance over speeds described by the Intel researchers. Last year, Intel reported that it had achieved speeds in excess of 1 gigahertz.
In contrast, Luxtera's chief executive, Alex Dickinson, says it has prototype chips that reach data rates of 10 Gb a second. Robert Manetta, of Intel, says its researchers have also reached the 10 Gb figure but has not yet published their results.
That speed is significant because 1 Gb wire network connections are becoming inexpensive commodities and 10 Gb has so far been achievable only with complex and expensive electro-optical systems.
"Ten gigabits is the tipping point," Mr Dickinson says. He says that traditional optical fibre was best at transporting data, while metal wire-based electronic systems were best at processing data. Now the two domains are beginning to merge, he says.
He acknowledges that the Luxtera designers are still not certain of how the technology would evolve. The company plans to use Freescale Semiconductor, based in Austin, Texas, formerly part of Motorola, to manufacture its chips, which potentially gives it access to a variety of computing circuits that could push the technology towards different applications.
New York Times