Researchers at IBM have developed a silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator that could someday be used to interconnect thousands of processor cores on a single chip. IBM said the modulator is 100 to 1,000 times smaller in size compared to previously demonstrated modulators of its kind and could significantly reduce cost, energy and heat while increasing communications bandwidth on chip.
“We believe this is a major advancement in the field of on-chip silicon nanophotonics,” said Dr. Will Green, the lead IBM scientist on the project. “Just like fiber optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM’s technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip.”
The report on this work, entitled “Ultra-compact, low RF power, 10 Gb/s silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator” by William M. J. Green, Michael J. Rooks, Lidija Sekaric, and Yurii A. Vlasov of IBM’s T.J.Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. is published in Volume 15 of the journal Optics Express. This work was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the Defense Sciences Office program “Slowing, Storing and Processing Light”.
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