WASHINGTON: Scientists claim to have created an incredibly fast photonic chip, bringing computers a step closer to working entirely with light.
An international team, led by Sydney University, has developed the optical integrator — a fundamental building block equivalent to those used in multi-functional electronic circuits — on a CMOS compatible silicon chip.
According to the scientists, 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.