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IBM scientists create superfast device that uses light to communicate between computer chips |
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IBM's scientists have unveiled a significant step towards replacing electrical signals that communicate via copper wires between computer chips with tiny silicon circuits that communicate using pulses of light. This is an important advancement in changing the way computer chips communicate with each other, as was reported in the recent issue of the scientific journal Nature. "This invention brings the vision of on-chip optical interconnections much closer to reality," said Dr. TC Chen, vice president, Science and Technology, IBM Research. "With optical communications embedded into the processor chips, the prospect of building power-efficient computer systems with performance at the Exaflop level might not be a very distant future."  The device, called a nanophotonic avalanche photodetector, is the fastest of its kind and could enable breakthroughs in energy-efficient computing that can have significant implications for the future of electronics. The IBM device explores the "avalanche effect" in Germanium, a material currently used in production of microprocessor chips. Analogous to a snow avalanche on a steep mountain slope, an incoming light pulse initially frees just a few charge carriers, which in turn free others until the original signal is amplified many times. Conventional avalanche photodetectors are not able to detect fast optical signals because the avalanche builds slowly. "This dramatic improvement in performance is the result of manipulating the optical and electrical properties at the scale of just a few tens of atoms to achieve performance well beyond accepted boundaries," said Dr. Assefa, the lead author on the paper. "These tiny devices are capable of detecting very weak pulses of light and amplifying them with unprecedented bandwidth and minimal addition of unwanted noise." IBM said that the avalanche photodetector that it demonstrated is the world's fastest device of its kind, capable of receiving optical information signals at 40Gbps (billion bits per second) and simultaneously multiplying them tenfold. Moreover, the device operates with just a 1.5V voltage supply, 20 times smaller than previous demonstrations. Thus a number of these tiny communication devices could potentially be powered by just a small AA-size battery, as compared to traditional avalanche photodetectors that require 20-30V power supplies. In IBM's device, the avalanche multiplication takes place within just a few tens of nanometers (one-thousandths of a millimeter) and that happens very fast. The tiny size also means that multiplication noise is suppressed by 50% - 70% with respect to conventional avalanche photodetectors. Made of silicon and germanium, the materials already widely used in production of microprocessor chips, IBM said its device is made with standard processes used in chip manufacturing. Thus, IBM says, potentially thousands of these devices can be built side-by-side with silicon transistors for high-bandwidth on-chip optical communications. The Avalanche Photodetector achievement, which is the last in a series of prior reports from IBM Research, is the last piece of the puzzle that completes the development of the "nanophotonics toolbox" of devices necessary to build the on-chip interconnects. In December 2006, IBM scientists had demonstrated silicon nanophotonic delay line that was used to buffer over a byte of information encoded in optical pulses - a requirement for building optical buffers for on-chip optical communications. In December 2007, IBM scientists announced the development of an ultra-compact silicon electro-optic modulator, which converts electrical signals into the light pulses, a prerequisite for enabling on-chip optical communications. In March 2008, IBM scientists announced the world's tiniest nanophotonic switch for "directing traffic" in on-chip optical communications, ensuring that optical messages can be efficiently routed . IBM's has a history of pioneering advanced silicon technologies to help enhance performance while reducing size and power consumption. Such advances include the development of the world's first copper-based microprocessor; silicon-on-insulator (SOI), a technology that reduces power consumption and increases performance by helping insulate the millions of transistors on a chip; and strained silicon, a technology that "stretches" material inside the silicon decreasing the resistance and speeding the flow of electrons through transistors. |
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