Jul 31 2010
The Optical Society (OSA) announced that it is delighted to recognize the research presented by Intel at the Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nano Photonics (IPR), held at the California-based Monterey Plaza Hotel.
Intel Labs’ director and chief technology officer of Intel, Justin Rattner, presented the 50Gbps Silicon Photonics Link prototype at the IPR. The prototype is the world’s first optical data connection that is silicon-based, featuring integrated lasers. The transmitter chip of the prototype is equipped with four distributed Bragg reflector lasers that are directly integrated into silicon waveguides with the help of UC Santa Barbara’s wafer-bonding concepts.
The Bragg reflector lasers are separately modulated using a silicon-photonic Mach-Zehnder modulator. Using a monolithic wavelength multiplexer, all the four streams are joined into a single fiber output. While, at the other end, the monolithic wavelength demultiplexer separates and sends the laser beams into integrated photodetectors. These photodetectors convert the data again into electrical signals. The silicon photonics link sends data over long distances at up to 50Gbps speed, when compared with electrical solutions.