Photonics Integration and its future at Advanced Photonics 2013
Shamsul Arafin
At the time of peak in technological development, isn’t it frustrating to hear that most of the computers used in our daily lives do nothing more than wait for the data? It is sad, but true, that your Intel® Core™ i5 Processor with high-speed RAM or state of the art liquid cooling system will not help you much to overcome this problem. This is because our computer speed is primarily set not by the processing power we have, but by the connections between the processor and the data it waits for. Photonics integration into the electronic circuits can resolve this problem easily because such photonic-electronic hybrid configuration can provide size weight and power reduction together with better system performance, e.g. speed, bandwidth and reliability. Not clear?
The point is that data transfer from module-to-module or chip-to-chip could be accomplished in a much efficient way with light or photons. This well-established fact motivates researchers worldwide to replace the existing old-fashioned copper wire technology to move the electronic signal by the photonics integration technique. Taking the fact – photons are much faster than electrons – into account and then developing an optical data transfer system, we’ll soon unveil computer systems 100 times (or even more!) faster than anything available today. If you cannot rely on me, I would request all of you to participate in Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nano-photonics (IPR) 2013 meeting in OSA's Advanced Photonics Congress. Why?
Because in this meeting, world recognized experts from both academia and industry will discuss the cutting-edge research advancements, trends, and problems of photonics devices and integration. The high quality presented results in this meeting promise to form the basis of fully functional, integrated circuits for use in advanced networks and interconnects for supercomputers and data centers in the near future. Anything else?
Of course, yes. In addition, how fast is the fastest microprocessor chip, now and in the future? When can we see the optical chips or light based optical interconnects in our daily computer? How soon the Intel’s light peak optical interconnect will be available in the market? What is the current race status for petaflop supercomputer? All these inquiries will be addressed by IPR 2013 meeting at OSA's Advanced Photonics Congress.
IPR 2013 topics will also include photonic integrated circuit design, technology and applications; physics and technology of on-chip active and passive photonic devices; planar waveguide technology, lightwave circuits and systems-on-the chip; and integrated photonic devices and circuits, as well as various topics of computational photonics; integrated diffractive optics and micro-photonics implementation and potential use in integrated photonics. So many exciting topics at a time? Are you not excited to actively participate in this meeting?
Time is passing by very quickly; do not forget to submit your new findings/ideas on photonics integration before the April 3rd deadline.
Silicon Photonics Future Vision. Silicon photonics can be used as chip-to-chip interconnects; backplane/display interconnects, in data center fabrics, chemical analysis and even medical lasers. Photocredit: http://www.intel.com/go/sp/
