{"id":219408,"date":"2025-08-05T04:03:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/new-mit-device-could-be-key-to-faster-more-energy-efficient-computing-and-communications"},"modified":"2025-08-05T04:03:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T09:03:20","slug":"new-mit-device-could-be-key-to-faster-more-energy-efficient-computing-and-communications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/new-mit-device-could-be-key-to-faster-more-energy-efficient-computing-and-communications","title":{"rendered":"New MIT Device Could Be Key to Faster, More Energy-Efficient Computing and Communications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xcm3eIeBMws?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Solves major problems associated with integrating electronics, photonics in microchip systems.<\/p>\n<p>The MIT device in the green callout could be key to faster, more energy-efficient data communication. It solves a major problem associated with packaging an electrical chip (black, center) with photonic chips (the eight surrounding squares). This image also shows an automated tool placing the final photonic chip into position. Image courtesy Drew Weninger, MIT.<\/p>\n<p>The future of digital computing and communications will involve both electronics\u2014manipulating data with electricity\u2014and photonics, or doing the same with light. Together the two could allow exponentially more data traffic across the globe in a process that is also more energy efficient.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bottom line is that integrating photonics with electronics in the same package is the transistor for the 21st century. If we can\u2019t figure out how to do that, then we\u2019re not going to be able to scale forward,\u201d says Lionel Kimerling, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and director of the MIT Microphotonics Center.<\/p>\n<p>Enter FUTUR-IC, a new research team based at MIT and funded by the National Science Foundation\u2019s Convergence Accelerator through a cooperative agreement. \u201cOur goal is to build a microchip industry value chain that is resource-efficient,\u201d says Anu Agarwal, head of FUTUR-IC and a principal research scientist at the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solves major problems associated with integrating electronics, photonics in microchip systems. The MIT device in the green callout could be key to faster, more energy-efficient data communication. It solves a major problem associated with packaging an electrical chip (black, center) with photonic chips (the eight surrounding squares). This image also shows an automated tool placing [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1635,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-materials","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}