On 27 July, Mario Paniccia (pictured) and Justin Rattner demonstrated silicon photonics link that represents the first major practical application for hybrid silicon technology unveiled in 2006, the product of research at Paniccia's lab at Intel Corp. Paniccia, an Intel Fellow, has been making headlines with his laboratory's breakthroughs, the most recent of which was a fast avalanche photodetector based on silicon. But in this demonstration, he and Rattner, Intel's CTO and a Senior Fellow, showed that the technology really does work. They sent data seamlessly from Santa Clara to Monterey, CA, at a blistering 50 Gbps. Intel believes this technology will help break us free of some of the communication constraints that are hindering both consumers and researchers.

Paniccia gave a keynote talk at the SPIE Photonics Europe symposium in April 2010.

Full story from R&D Magazine
Video interview with Mario Paniccia from SPIE Newsroom