"Within five years, we hope to connect microprocessors and memory chips right to the optochip, producing the optical analogue to the electrical multichip modules in today's big-iron machines."
At only 10 Gb/s, there are already buses available that do better than that. The good part is the small size I think. At another point they say 160 2 Gb/s links in a small package. That's the goodness.
Isn't it funny that as time marches on and certain technologies improve, that other areas become much simpler and cheaper to deal with. I can imagine that components such as this making it easier for more engineers and hobbyists getting into electronics, embedded systems, etc.. because of this.
As a kid my parents had one of those fiber optic swans you put water in and set atop a "light bulb"; this was in the early 80s or late 70s and I thought at the time (being a geek and familiar with RF) that this fiber optic technology is going to have long reaching ramifications in a good way...
I'm excited..
Optical interconnects have been the Next Big Thing for a long time now.
http://www.anandtech.com/print/3834 http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
