Mario Paniccia, an Intel fellow and director of the Photonics Technology Lab in Santa Clara, CA, holds a test fixture with a modulator mounted at its center, a die holding numerous light detectors, and a gold-colored, fingernail-size square of hybrid lasers, built on a silicon substrate. Credit: Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover

"We're going to be communicating with terabits of information in the next decade," says Mario Paniccia, an Intel fellow and director of the Photonics Technology Lab in Santa Clara, CA. A terabit of data is the capacity of roughly 35 DVDs. But today's fastest telecommunications networks use chips that zip data around at 10 to 40 gigabits per second, and most networks use expensive, clunky components that are assembled piecemeal and achieve lesser speeds. "The ability to have an integrated chip that can transmit and receive a terabit is a compelling solution, and we're still talking a chip the size of your fingernail," says ­Paniccia, holding in his palm three silicon chips that could prove to be the heart of that solution--thumbnail-size squares that reflect light like mirrors.

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