Bridging Photonics and Computing 

Speaker/Performer: Mario Paniccia, Director of Photonics Technology Lab, Intel
Sponsor: CITRIS (Ctr for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society), UC Berkeley (Headquarters), Research Exchange seminar
Abstract:
The silicon chip has been the mainstay of the electronics industry for the last 40 years and has revolutionized the way the world operates. Today a silicon chip the size of a fingernail contains over one billion transistors and has the computing power that only a decade ago would take up an entire room of servers. Recently silicon photonics has attracted a great deal of attention since it offers an opportunity for low cost opto-electronic solutions for applications ranging from telecommunications down to chip-to-chip interconnects as well as possible applications in new emerging areas such as optical sensing and or bio-medical applications.
Recent advances and research breakthroughs in silicon photonic device performance over the last few years have shown that silicon can be considered as a material onto which one can build future optical devices. While significant efforts are needed to improve device performance and to "commercialize" these technologies, progress is moving at a rapid rate. If successful, silicon may similarly come to impact optical communications as it has impacted the electronics industry.