By Peter Weiss
It’s a basic rule of microelectronics: For components that generate and manipulate light, silicon is the wrong material. But rules, as the saying goes, are made to be broken.
Engineers in California now report that they’ve made a microchip silicon laser that they claim should be widely useful in circuits.
The development could enable circuit designers to replace many metal wires used to transmit signals in computer systems with optical fibers. And that, says electrical engineer Victor Krutul of Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, could rev up the flow of data to rates 100 times as fast as those possible today. Krutul is spokesperson for the Intel team that has made a prototype of the silicon laser.