Your Computer Will Likely Transmit Data At Light Speed Thanks To This Innovation: Glowing Silicon

After half a century of continual invention and innovation to make computer chips work faster, it seems that we can rely on Moore’s Law again. Specifically, researchers have come up with a way of making silicon glow, Wired reported. This will change how we improve the processing speed of computer chips, using photons that emit light for transmitting data instead of having to double the number of transistors on a chip every two years.

This is a huge milestone in the computer chip area. Over the years, chip makers like Intel and AMD have been stacking more threads and cores into their chips while reducing the gap between transistors to just 7nm. However, the drawbacks of this approach include overheating as well as electron traffic jams, which slows down or halts the flow of communication.

This is probably why Intel has been taking more time than expected to work on its 10nm technology. It’s important to get the right manufacturing process to prevent such issues from happening due to packing transistors tightly.

However, Wired reported that a group of European researchers grew silicon alloy nanowires that can emit light, making it possible to make silicon glow. But according to the lead author of the study, physicist Erik Bakkers, using this technique, his lab is building a mall-sized silicon laser that can be built into a computer chip. As a result, we may have computer chips that generate less heat and transfer data faster while consuming less energy.

Essentially, Bakkers have been working with his team for the past decade to figure out a way of changing silicon’s structural shape to allow its photons to move around more freely. And they have finally succeeded. With photon-based transistors, computer chips will be able to transmit data faster, across several channels at a time while electrons move data across only one channel each time.

However, computer chips in the future won’t necessarily be optical. It makes sense to use electrons for transmitting data in a component because it needs to travel over a short distance only. For longer ones, however, between two components for example, he says that photons would work better. This will help not only home PCs but also self-driving cars, data centers, etc.

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