Researchers develop on-chip pulsed laser

An Australian-led research team has developed a new pulsed laser for transmitting and processing information on and between silicon computer chips.

By producing ultra-short light pulses at 200GHz, the international team says the laser could dramatically speed up computing if implemented on a large scale.

Research leader David Moss described the on-chip laser as "key" to enabling high-speed signal processing and transmission.

Ultimately, the technology could provide consumers with cheaper and faster computers, he said.

"Currently information on a chip is shuffled around using electronic signals over copper wires, or interconnects. We know that metal is prone to 'choking' on the bandwidth bottleneck," said Moss, an associate professor at the University of Sydney.

"The ever-growing demand for even faster technology means ultrafast on-chip and chip-to-chip optical data communications are important."

"It's clear that more efficient methods to transmit vast amounts of data around circuit boards are needed to not only to keep up with but also go beyond, which primarily is what this research is about."