Light pulses enable ultrafast data transfer

Electrical engineers from the University of California reported their findings in Nature Journal and described an ultra compact, low power pulse compressor on a silicon chip – the first of its kind. The miniaturised short pulse generator is said to eliminate a roadblock on the way to optical interconnects for use in pcs, data centres, imaging applications and beyond. The project was led by Dawn Tan, pictured, PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. According to Tan, these optical interconnects, which will aggregate slower data channels with pulse compression, will have far higher data rates and generate less heat than the copper wires they will replace. She believes such aggregation devices will be critical for future optical connections within and between high speed digital electronic processors in future digital information systems. "Our pulse compressor is implemented on a chip, so we can easily integrate it with computer processors," said Tan. "Next generation computer networks and computer architectures will likely replace copper interconnects with their optical counterparts, and these have to be cmos compatible. This is why we created our pulse compressor on silicon." The pulse compressor could also provide a cost effective method to derive short pulses for a variety of imaging technologies such as time resolved spectroscopy - which can be used to study lasers and electron behaviour, and optical coherence tomography - which can capture biological tissues in three dimensions. In addition to increasing data transfer rates, switching from copper wires to optical interconnects could reduce power consumption caused by heat dissipation, switching and transmission of electrical signals.