Although redundant and obvious, let’s start at the beginning. For decades, electronic chips (those of processors, memoirs, etc.) have communicated with electrons that travel through copper cables. But soon they found a problem as the power and processing speed increased: The electrons they used to transmit generate heat. And, as the chips are more powerful, to move data between them consumes almost as much energy as processing them.
It was then that photons (light particles) began to be used instead of electricity to transport information inside or between chips. And the best option was the lasers, since the photons you broadcast are perfectly synchronized. That makes it an ideal tool to transmit accurately encoded information. But these also have a limit: there is only one channel. And how many more information rivers, “the better.
This is where a new study enters. Imagine that before you could only send messages using a flashlight with a single white light (a wavelength). The solution was a “frequency comb” or Frequency Comb, a technology that divides that white light into dozens of colors, each stable, consistent and without interfering with others. So, It is possible to simultaneously send dozens of different messages by a single optical fiberall of different color and traveling at the speed of light. And the most impressive is that all that happens on a device the size of a nail. They have miniaturized the rainbow.
That is what a team of engineers from the University of Columbia has achieved and turns out to be a poetic case: put an entire rainbow inside a chip. And, with him, they have taken a key step towards A new era in the transmission of information and energy savings of the data centers that support artificial intelligence.
The progress, published in Nature Photony by Michal Lipson’s team, shows that it is possible Create an optical “frequency comb (an light source containing dozens of perfectly ordered colors) within a silicon device the size of a nail. Until now, generating that special light required equipment to the size of a ultra -regular closet and lasers. Lipson and his group have reduced it to a single piece of hardware, cheap, stable and scalable.
To understand the magnitude of the progress, it is convenient to imagine how a Frequency Comb works. Unlike a conventional laser (which emits a single light color), A frequency comb produces many different wavelengthsspaced with mathematical precision. Views in a spectrometer, they appear as a series of equally separate peaks: the “teeth” of the comb.
Each of those teeth can transport different information without interfering with others. In telecommunications, that means that a single optical fiber can send dozens of parallel data flows, multiplying capacity without adding more cables or more energy. It is the principle of Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM), the technology that made the Internet possible at the end of the 20th century, now reinvented in chip format.
“We have combined the power of An industrial laser with the precision of an optical clock, all in one chip”Explains the engineer Andrés Gil-Molina, leader of the study, in a statement.
Data centers that feed artificial intelligence are saturated: They consume massive amounts of energy and need to move information between processors at increasing speeds. Currently, each optical channel usually requires its own laser, occupying space and generating heat.
The new device can replace dozens of lasers with a single chip that generates all the necessary light channels. This reduces the size of the hardware, lowers infrastructure and, above all, decreases energy consumptionone of the great technological and climatic challenges of the 21st century.
“The advance comes at the right time -adds Lipson -. The demand for powerful and efficient light is huge, and This type of integration can change the architecture of the data centers. ”
But the impact goes far beyond the Internet. A compact and stable frequency comb is an extremely versatile tool. It can be used for Lidar technology, capable of mapping objects with millimeter resolution and low cost, ideal for autonomous vehicles.
I also know Apply in portable spectroscopy, which would allow to detect pollutants or diagnose diseases without bulky equipment or in miniature optical watches, the most precise in the worldessential to synchronize quantum networks or GPS systems. In quantum computing, where photons of different frequencies can code and intertwine quantum information.
In other words: when domesticating the light, doors open on all scales, from artificial intelligence chips to the instruments that will measure the time of the future. And they would have the same cost of the current ones.