Chip breakthrough turns optical data into readable soundwaves

Light-based computing, which encodes data in photons rather than electrons, is a major area of research for companies such as IBM and Intel that has potentially huge advantages over existing electronic processes including increased bandwidth, faster data speeds and none of the waste heat associated with electronic resistance.

The big challenge presented by photonic data is that it’s too fast for existing computer chips to read. Current technology relies on electronics to convert photons from high-speed optical fibre connections into electrons, which it can process, but this generates heat. This waste heat is a limiting factor on the development of ever more powerful computers and telecommunication systems

Now, in a claimed world-first, researchers from the University of Sydney’s Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) have demonstrated technology that’s able to convert optical data into soundwaves and then back into optical data again.

Project supervisor Dr Birgit Stiller describes the technology as being like an “acoustic buffer” which slows down the optical data to a velocity five orders of magnitude slower, allows for the data to be briefly stored and managed inside the chip for processing, retrieval and further transmission as light waves.