Replacing copper cables with rays of light

What is Silicon Photonics?

Silicon Photonics is a combination of two of the most important inventions of the 20th century—the silicon integrated circuit and the semiconductor laser. It enables faster data transfer over longer distances compared to traditional electronics, while utilizing the efficiencies of Intel’s high-volume silicon manufacturing.

What the future needs

Promising 100 times the processing power we have today, Silicon Photonic Technology is the prime candidate for carrying this baton of information innovation.

Traditional copper cabling is stifling datacenter evolution because of its slow data transfer capacity. Silicon photonics - which used optical fibre for data transfers increases bandwidth in servers and racks, improve data transfer speeds and reduce datacentre complexity.

The optical fibre is directly built into semiconductor chips to give IT "Computing at the speed of light".

If you had the capacity of transfering data at 50Gps between two devices, you are talking about transfering an HD movie in less that a second. Silicon photonics allow us to keep up with Moore's law.

In 2011, intel co-funded a silicon photonics research and production centre at the University of Washinton.