Optical cable from camera to computer

High-speed data communication isn’t so speedy by the time it reaches your video player or smartphone.
Lasers may send information flying in tiny bursts of light through optical fibers across oceans and cities. But you’re still in the electronic slow lane when you’re transferring high-definition videos or other large files between devices. Then the content travels only at the rate permitted by the U.S.B. or other cord.
But soon, some data exchanges between consumer gadgets may travel at the higher rate of fiber optics, letting people transfer a Blu-ray version of “Gone With the Wind,” for example, or the complete family photo archive in less than a minute.
Later this year, Intel will introduce its Light Peak fiber optic link, in a bid to replace U.S.B. and other electrical cables that now connect computers with digital cameras, music players, smartphones and dozens of other devices, said Jason Ziller, Intel’s director for the optical input-output program office.
Light Peak optical cable technology, which includes computer chips and miniature lasers, will be available to manufacturers later this year, he said, for installation in products next year. Prices are not yet available from Intel.
The first version of the optical cable will transmit 10 gigabits per second of data both ways, and is expected to scale to 100 gigabits a second in the next decade, Mr. Ziller said.
By contrast, the high-bandwidth U.S.B. 2.0 cables now in wide use have a rate of 480 megabits a second. The new U.S.B. 3.0 specification now in development has a theoretical maximum data rate of up to 5 gigabits a second, said Richard Brown, vice president for marketing at VIA Technologies, a semiconductor design house in Taiwan that is using the U.S.B. 3.0 standard in two new chips. He said the chips would soon be available in consumer products.
Optics may also get a boost from new technology that is still in the laboratory and is intended to integrate lasers directly into silicon chips as they are manufactured. Typically, lasers must be either packaged separately, or grafted onto a chip after it is formed, a relatively expensive procedure.
But at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a research group has achieved a breakthrough, creating lasers directly on silicon chips as part of their manufacturing, said Lionel C. Kimerling, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the MIT Microphotonics Center. Dr. Kimerling and colleagues, including Jurgen Michel and Jifeng Liu, have developed and demonstrated lasers made from germanium, a material used in advanced silicon chip manufacturing processes. Chips are made in layers, and the germanium lasers are built into the chip during the layering process. [NYT]