Researchers at the University of Sydney have developed a chip which can turn optical data into readable soundwaves and back again.
The chip is being developed for use in telecommunications, optical fibre networks and cloud computing data centres where traditional electronic devices are susceptible to electromagnetic interference, produce too much heat or use too much energy.
While light is useful for taking data over long distances between continents through fibre-optic cables, its speed advantage can become a nuisance when information is being processed in computers and telecommunication systems. You need to slow things down on a computer chip so that you can do something useful with the information.
In traditional microchips this is done using electronics. But as computers and telecommunication systems become bigger and faster, the associated heat is making some systems unmanageable.
The use of photonic chips - bypassing electronics - is being pursued by large companies such as IBM and Intel but for this to become a commercial reality, photonic data on the chip needs to be slowed down so that they can be processed, routed, stored and accessed.
To help solve these problems, Dr Birgit Stiller and Moritz Merklein, both from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), decided to develop a memory for digital information that coherently transfers between light and sound waves on a photonic microchip.
“The information in our chip in acoustic form travels at a velocity five orders of magnitude slower than in the optical domain,” said Stiller. "It is like the difference between thunder and lightning."
Building an acoustic buffer inside the chip improves their ability to control information by several orders of magnitude. Another advantage is their system is not limited to a narrow bandwidth.
"So unlike previous systems this allows us to store and retrieve information at multiple wavelengths simultaneously, vastly increasing the efficiency of the device," she said.
[Information enters in the form of light waves and is converted and stored in the chip as acoustic waves. This can later be transformed back into light waves for further distribution out of the chip. Image: University of Sydney]