Light lanes: These three chips each hold more than 40 optical components etched on a specially treated glass substrate. Credit: Courtesy of Infinera/Gene Lee

An all-optical Internet--fast, ultracheap, free of bulky electronics--may still be years away, but big advances in integrated optical chips are nearing market to help fuel the Internet's growth. This image shows one-centimeter-square chips built at Infinera in Sunnyvale, CA. Each chip contains more than 40 optical devices that are important to managing the transmission of data on light beams; due to be commercialized this summer, they can replace individual components within Internet hubs. And this fall ­Luxtera, of Carlsbad, CA, is commercializing a chip that integrates 100 optical components on silicon. Affixed to fiber-optic cables, the chips can provide superfast connections between servers in data centers. "The vision is a path of integration in a similar way that electronics was integrated--from a few, to 40, to someday hundreds of optical devices on the same chips," says Marin ­Soljačić, a physicist and photonics researcher at MIT. Within five years, optical integration is likely to have a "substantial impact" on telecom networks and data centers, he says. "After that, it might start pene­trating your laptop or desktop."

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