Posted: June 17, 2010 | |
Silicon chips to enter world of high speed optical processing |
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(Nanowerk News) Physicists at the University of Sydney have brought silicon chips closer to performing all-optical computing and information processing that could overcome the speed limitations intrinsic to electronics, with the first report published of an on-chip all-optical temporal integrator in Nature Communications today. | |
An all-optical integrator, or lightwave capacitor, is a fundamental building block equivalent to those used in multi-functional electronic circuits. | |
Associate Professor David Moss, a senior researcher within the Institute for Photonic and Optical Science (IPOS), leads an international team which has developed the optical integrator on a CMOS compatible silicon chip. | |
The device, a photonic chip compatible with electronic technology (CMOS), will be a key enabler of next generation fully-integrated ultrafast optical data processing technologies for many applications including ultra-fast optical information-processing, optical memory, measurement, computing systems, and real-time differential equation computing units. | |
It is based on a passive micro-ring resonator and performs the time integral of an arbitrary optical waveform with a time resolution of a few picoseconds, corresponding to a processing speed of around 200 GHz, and with a "hold" time approaching a nanosecond. | |
This represents an unprecedented processing time-bandwidth product (TBP) - a principal figure of merit, defined as the ratio between the integration time window to the fastest time feature that can be accurately processed - approaching 100 - much higher than advanced passive electronic integrators where the TBP is less than 10. | |
The research has just been published in a paper entitled On-chip CMOS compatible all-optical integrator in the international journal, Nature Communications. | |
Associate Professor Moss said using light for ultrahigh speed information processing, computing, and storage on a silicon chip was an important breakthrough. | |
"With society's demands for even faster technology, ultrafast optical computing and signal processing are important," he said. | |
"This on-chip optical integrator is a key to enabling many optical functions on a chip, including ultra high speed signal processing, computing, and optical memory. | |
"This technology will ultimately provide the consumer with cheaper and faster computers." | |
The device, based on high index doped silica glass, is low loss and has a high degree of manufacturability and design flexibility. This makes it an ideal ultrahigh speed optical integrator with a performance good enough not just for optical computing but for a wide range of applications including optical memory, real-time differential equation computing units, and many others. | |
Associate Professor Moss is a researcher with the Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), an ARC Centre of Excellence. |
Source: University of Sydney |
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