Non-commercially viable technologies don’t always make it out of R&D, but a promising advance called silicon photonics might still has some hope.
Chipmakers over at Intel and IBM have already undergone research in this area, but today we find that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California’s Berkeley, and the University of Colorado’s Boulder are declaring that a prototype will be complete in 2017.
By integrating the ability to send data through light in chips, Silicon Photonics would drastically change data centers and even consumer computing. Vladimir Stojanovic, lead researcher at Berkeley, has said that “…the biggest challenge is packaging the technology affordably”. This will likely impede consumer advances and roll out through data centers for 2016. As it cheapens, silicon photonics will make its’ way towards the PC and mobile markets, drastically changing the way we do data. Click here to see some of the obstacles physicists are taking on with silicon chips. Until the silicon rolls out, FluxLight has got you covered.