IBM chip uses light to tackle big data

The breakthrough technology, called silicon nanophotonics, allows the integration of different optical components side by side with electrical circuits on a single silicon chip using, for the first time, sub 100nm semiconductor technology. The result of more than ten years' research, it takes advantage of pulses of light for communication and provides a 'super highway' for large volumes of data to move at rapid speeds between computer chips in servers, large data centres and supercomputers. "This technology breakthrough is a result of more than a decade of pioneering research at IBM," said Dr John Kelly, senior vp and director of IBM Research. "This allows us to move silicon nanophotonics technology into a real world manufacturing environment that will have impact across a range of applications." By adding a few processing modules into a high performance 90nm cmos fabrication line, Kelly and his team were able to integrate a variety of silicon nanophotonics components, such as wavelength division multiplexers, modulators and detectors, side by side with cmos electrical circuitry. As a result, they claim single chip optical communications transceivers can be manufactured in a conventional semiconductor foundry, providing significant cost reduction over traditional approaches. The technology has so far been used to demonstrate transceivers that exceed 25Gb/s per channel. The researchers believe the breakthrough will help solve the bandwidth limitations of servers, data centres and supercomputers, and moreover demonstrate the feasibility of silicon nanophotonics for chip manufacturing.