First chip that uses light for data transfer developed

A microprocessor chip that uses light rather than electricity to transfer data at rapid speeds while consuming minute amounts of energy has been developed by researchers ofUniversity of Colorado Boulder in US.   

• The new chip has a bandwidth density of 300 gigabits per second per square millimetre, about 10 to 50 times greater than current packaged electrical-only microprocessors. Its length and width is just 3 millimetres by 6 millimetres.

Advantages

• Light based communication is that multiple parallel data streams encoded on different colours of light can be sent over one and the same medium
• This enables very dense packing of light communication ports on a chip, enabling huge total bandwidth.