Sean M. Koehl

Development of CMOS-Compatible Integrated Silicon Photonics Devices

This paper surveys technical challenges involved in designing and manufacturing integrated optoelectronic devices in a high-volume complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) microelectronic fabrication facility. The paper begins by introducing the motivations for building these devices in silicon. We discuss the advantages and challenges of both hybrid and monolithic strategies for optoelectronic integration. We then discuss the issues involved in building the devices in a standard CMOS facility, including specific technical examples. These include low-loss waveguides (WGs) for Raman lasers, fast silicon modulators, SiGe heterostructures for infrared photodetection, silicon-oxynitride (SiON) devices on silicon-on-insulator (SOI), silicon optical bench (SiOB) technology, and waveguide tapers. We conclude with a discussion and recommendations for future work in silicon photonics

Integrated Silicon Photonics: Harnessing the Data Explosion

With the digital universe expanding at an exponential rate, silicon photonics is poised to bring fiber optics to a much broader array of data transport applications. Researchers at Intel Labs describe a fully integrated optical data link that assembles all the core technologies needed to develop high-volume, low-cost fiber-optics.

Navigating large data sets in virtual worlds

The ever increasing mass of information leads to new challenges on analyzing or navigating the large data sets. Combining visual perception and interaction capabilities with the enormous storage and computational power of todays computer systems, especially with the rise of 3D virtual worlds, has great potential in providing deeper immersion and intuitive interactions with large data sets. In this demo, we exploit the potential of navigating large data-sets in a 3D virtual world, by transforming raw data sets into semantically rich, high level interactions and presenting data through rich, real-time visualization. We also explore the use of various digital devices that most users have available to build “distributed interfaces” and provide capabilities that make interactions within the 3D space, and with the data sets presented in the 3D space, more natural and expressive.