From CNET: Laser light has made its way into a new product line Intel expects will speed up the data centers at the heart of online services like Google search and Facebook social networking.
After years of research, the chipmaker has begun selling a product using a technology called silicon photonics that builds lasers directly into computer chips. That means communications can take place using light traveling over glass fiber-optic cables that can carry much more data than electrons on traditional copper wires.
"We see a future where silicon photonics optical input-output is everywhere in the data center," said Diane Bryant, general manager of Intel's Data Center Group, at the company's Intel Developer Forum Wednesday in San Francisco.
It's not technology you'll plug into your PC or phone any time soon, but silicon photonics could help you out. That's because data centers packed with thousands of servers are shouldering more and more work -- everything from Facebook's face recognition to Google's language translation. Opening up communication bottlenecks between those servers means new services are economical and existing ones can run faster.
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