January 4, 2016 - US researchers have for the first time incorporated photonic components into a microprocessor integrated circuit chip to explore ways to create a high-speed, low-power computer processor. The processor incorporates more than 70 million transistors and 850 photonic elements in a simplified instruction set computer (RISC-V) architecture and is fabricated in an existing chip factory, showing that the process is compatible with existing production processes . The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, MIT and the University of Colorado Boulder. Project experts said that the microprocessor chip is rectangular, each side of the size of 3 mm and 6 mm, respectively, which photonic components act as input / output ports. "This is a milestone," said Vladimir Stojanovic, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, because "it's the first processor to communicate light with the outside world." Optical communications and electronic communications compared to a large bandwidth, low power consumption and other advantages. Optical communications have so far greatly improved data communications between computers and computers, ie computer network communications, but bringing these efficiencies to the inside of a computer or computer microprocessor chip is not easy. The commercialization of large-scale electronic integrated circuits is complicated and costly to manufacture, so researchers are working to reduce the added cost of introducing photonic components into the chip and the consequent rate of defective products. Therefore, when etching photonic components such as ring modulators, photodetectors and vertical couplers, they utilize the characteristics of silicon germanium transistors, polycrystalline silicon and single-crystal silicon layers as much as possible, and the transistor of the transistor acts as a waveguide. The paper's research paper published in the journal Nature in the United Kingdom said that the results of running various computer programs showed that the data communication bandwidth in the chip was 300 gigabits per square millimeter, equivalent to the existing " Pure electronic "Microprocessor communication bandwidth within 10 to 50 times. Test results also show that the on-chip photon I / O port consumes 1.3 picofarads per bit, which means that transmitting 1 terabit data consumes only 1.3 watts of power. In addition, the photon input / output port was experimentally sent and received data at a distance of 10 meters, while the high-speed electronic data line transmission distance limit was about 1 meter. Researchers speculate that this low-power photonic input / output port is expected to be used by units such as the data center, which often consume large amounts of power and are likely to continue to grow rapidly. According to the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council, all data centers in the United States together consume about 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2013, equivalent to about 2% of the nation's total electricity consumption for the year. In 2015, the application of this technology to the incorporation of photonic components in microprocessor IC chips has led to two start-ups in the United States, one of which is directly related to the University of California, Berkeley, and its researchers.