Silicon hybrid lasers, developed by Intel and UCSB in 2006, use Group III-V semiconductor materials and silicon, and can be mass-produced using photolithography. They integrate optical systems with computer chips, enabling faster processing speeds and data transfer rates at the terabit level. They are part of the photonic computing research program, which aims to use light to process data and reduce energy consumption.
A silicon hybrid laser is a new type of laser, developed in 2006 by Intel and the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). This laser is made of Group III-V semiconductor materials (for example, gallium(III) arsenide, indium(III) phosphide) of the same type used in mass-produced computer chips, as well as silicon. A hybrid silicon laser is distinct from the laser diodes we currently use in our computers and CD players, based on indium phosphide, which must be assembled and aligned individually for each unit and cannot be mass-produced in the same way as computer chips .
Separate III-V semiconductor wafers should be used to fabricate current laser diodes. Silicon-hybrid lasers are primarily made of silicon and are fabricated on a wave of silicon, which we have extensive experience mass-producing thanks to photolithography and the information revolution. Silicon hybrid lasers will greatly reduce the cost of building a laser.
Although hybrid silicon lasers also use indium phosphide to generate light, it does not use the chemical to route, sense, modulate and amplify the light, as in ordinary laser diodes, but instead uses silicon. Silicon hybrid lasers are a huge step towards integrating optical systems with conventional computer chips, which could enable processing speeds and data transfer rates hundreds of times faster than the best we have today. These transfer speeds would be at the terabit level rather than the gigabit or megabit level we see today.
The silicon-hybrid lasers are part of a research program called photonic computing, which wants to see computer chips use light tangent to electrical impulses to process data. Light requires less energy per unit of data. Silicon-hybrid lasers can be mass-produced on an industrial scale, with hundreds or more per die. Many lasers on chips would be needed to make a computer based primarily on photonics. Another necessary step for true photonics would be the technology to literally stop light in a crystal, analogous to the storage of electrons in current computer logic. Preliminary research has shown promising results in this direction.
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