In a development announced in the journal Nature Photonics, Intel is claiming 'world record' performance in optical communications using silicon photonics, which it says is essential for "ultra-fast transfer of data in future computers powered by many processor cores." Till now, Silicon photonics technology, using complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) techniques, has suffered from performance shortcomings.

The Intel research was jointly funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Manufacturing and process development was provided by Numonyx, a flash memory chipmaker.

In a statement, Mario Paniccia, an Intel Fellow and director of the company's Photonics Technology Lab, said: "This research result is another example of how silicon can be used to create very high-performing optical devices."

This is a significant development as it is based on silicon, which is a low-cost and readily available material - unlike the more expensive materials used in semiconductor chips - and outperforms more exotic, pricier materials. The development can be used not only in optical communications, but also in areas such as sensing, imaging, quantum cryptography, and biological applications.

For this breakthrough development, a silicon-based Avalanche Photodiode (APD) was created by a team led by Intel researchers, to achieve a "gain-bandwidth product" of 340 GHz. The company claims this is "the best result ever measured for this key APD performance metric", and allows lower-cost optical links running at data rates of 40 Gbps or higher.