Light and electrons interact in a complex dance within fiber optic devices. A new study by University of Illinois engineers found that in the transistor laser, a device for next-generation high-speed computing, the light and electrons spur one another on to faster switching speeds than any devices available.
Milton Feng, the Nick Holonyak Jr. Emeritus Chair in electrical and computer engineering, found the speed-stimulating effects with graduate students Junyi Qiu and Curtis Wang and Holonyak, the Bardeen Emeritus Chair in electrical and computer engineering and physics. The team published its results in the Journal of Applied Physics.
As big data become bigger and cloud computing becomes more commonplace, the infrastructure for transferring the ever-increasing amounts of data needs to speed up, Feng said. Traditional technologies used for fiber optic cables and high-speed data transmission, such as diode lasers, are reaching the upper end of their switching speeds, Feng said.
"You can compute all you want in a data center. However, you need to take that data in and out of the system for the user to use," Feng said. "You need to transfer the information for it to be useful, and that goes through these fiber optic interconnects. But there is a fundamental switching limitation of the diode laser used. This technology, the transistor laser, is the next-generation technology, and could be a hundred times faster."
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