Superfast Lightwaves To store Data

Researchers from the University of Sydney CUDOS have dramatically slowed digital information carried as light waves by transferring the data into sound waves in an integrated circuit.

"It is like the difference between thunder and lightning" Said Dr Birgit Stiller, supervisor of the project at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS).

“The information in our chip in acoustic form travels at a velocity five orders of magnitude slower than in the optical domain,” said Dr Birgit Stiller, research fellow at the University of Sydney and supervisor of the project. The delay allows for the data to be briefly stored and managed inside the chip for processing, retrieval and further transmission as light waves.

While light is considered an excellent carrier of information, its speed creates difficulties when it’s being processed in computers and telecommunication systems. This new research promises to resolve this complication by slowing down the light and transforming it into sound.

"For this to become a commercial reality, photonic data on the chip needs to be slowed down so that they can be processed, routed, stored and accessed." merklein said.

"This is an important step forward in the field of optical information processing as this concept fulfils all requirements for current and future generation optical communication systems." said benjamin eggleton [Director od CUDOS].

These chips are being developed for use in telecommunications, optical fibre networks and cloud computing data centres where traditional electronic devices are susceptible to electromagnetic interference, produce too much heat or use too much energy.

[Source]