Photonic Diode Invented

[Monster]

Slashdot aggregated the news:

"Researchers at Purdue University have managed to create a silicon device that acts as a passive diode for infrared optical signals. From the Purdue news release: 'The diode is capable of "nonreciprocal transmission," meaning it transmits signals in only one direction, making it capable of information processing, said Minghao Qi (pronounced Chee), an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. "This one-way transmission is the most fundamental part of a logic circuit, so our diodes open the door to optical information processing," said Qi.' One of the same researchers had already (using similar technology) created a way to convert laser pulses to RF."

Discovery News article :

In this age of superfast fiber-optic Internet cables, slowness is still an issue. Light -- or photons -- traveling through the cables and carrying data have to be converted into electrons once they reach the computer. This not only takes time, the components that do the conversation take up space. The result: a huge bottleneck. On top of that the conversion is one more point at which hackers can eavesdrop on data.

But now a team at Purdue University has built a tiny optical diode that eliminates the need for conversion altogether and could allow computers to process the photons as data the way they currently process electrons.

 

[Brandon]

LOVE IT!
Can't wait till I have fiber optic's in my computers vs wires.

 

[dhoppas]

Saweet!

 

[Sunfyre7896]

I'd just like to be able to have fiber optics at all. We can't even get U-verse or the Verizon Fios in our house. There's no fiber optics in the ground in our area at all. Love living in a small town bordering a big city. They're in no hurry to upgrade to the most modern technology.

 

[Monster]

I'd just like to be able to have fiber optics at all. We can't even get U-verse or the Verizon Fios in our house. There's no fiber optics in the ground in our area at all. Love living in a small town bordering a big city. They're in no hurry to upgrade to the most modern technology.

The reason why they're not in a hurry is b/c it turned out many years ago that coaxial cable is actually better than fiber optics. For instance, after the reunification of Germany (in the early 1990ies), when it was decided what kind of phone/Internet lines East Germany would get, they chose fiber optics. As the speed of traffic technology increased (in the mid-to-late 1990ies), they discovered that coaxial cable had far greater bandwidth reserves than fiber optics. That's why nowadays, West Germany has faster Internet than East Germany, despite East Germany has the most modern (fiber optic) infrastructure. The fastest Internet here is VDSL-50 (50 Megabit/sec), sufficient for IPTV with HDTV 3D television streaming (at 100/200 Hz frame rates) and/or recording, and it runs on coaxial cable.