An Intel-led research team has developed an inexpensive silicon-based device that promises to revolutionize the way that multiple processor cores communicate within computing systems.
The research team’s avalanche photodetector (APD) is designed to sense and amplify optical signals and convert the light beams into electrical signals, said Yimin Kang, a senior researcher at Intel, who noted that manufacturers currently pay more than $100 for a single device of this type.
“Intel’s motivation is to make a device that is very low cost” by building it “out of silicon using germanium materials,” Kang said. “Silicon is not only a very cheap material,” but also can be produced using “a process that is very mature, very robust.”
Connecting Optically
The new silicon-based light sensor is yet another significant step in the industry’s development of ultrafast data-transfer methods that will enable computing devices to be powered by greater numbers of processor cores, notes Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s photonics technology lab.
“Today we are moving from single core to multi-core, and we see quad-core coming,” Paniccia said. “If we continue to scale this in the future, we are going to have tens if not hundreds of cores” in computing devices.
The development of improved methods for moving data in and out of all those cores is a key industry requirement, Paniccia observed. “What we really want to do is connect these cores optically.”
“In order to do that, though, we have to develop technology that’s high-volume manufacturable and low cost,” Paniccia said. “And we believe the way to do that is building optical devices and optical technology on this wonderful material we all love, which is silicon.”
The new device, which integrates both silicon and CMOS processing technologies, achieves a “gain-bandwidth product” of 340 GHz, which Paniccia said is the best result ever measured for this…