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Archive: https://archive.today/TrfZg

From the post:

>Computer chips that cram billions of electronic devices into a few square inches have powered the digital economy and transformed the world. Scientists may be on the cusp of launching a similar technological revolution — this time using light. In a significant advance toward that goal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and collaborators have pioneered a way to make integrated circuits for light by depositing complex patterns of specialized materials onto silicon wafers. These so-called photonics chips use optical devices such as lasers, waveguides, filters and switches to shuttle light around and process information. The new advance could provide a big boost for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computers and optical atomic clocks.

Archive: https://archive.today/TrfZg From the post: >>Computer chips that cram billions of electronic devices into a few square inches have powered the digital economy and transformed the world. Scientists may be on the cusp of launching a similar technological revolution — this time using light. In a significant advance toward that goal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and collaborators have pioneered a way to make integrated circuits for light by depositing complex patterns of specialized materials onto silicon wafers. These so-called photonics chips use optical devices such as lasers, waveguides, filters and switches to shuttle light around and process information. The new advance could provide a big boost for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computers and optical atomic clocks.
[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Sounds like this really can output any wavelength, and it's not just a bunch of discrete lasers it selects among:

(from another article (nist.gov)):

Semiconductor lasers are very good at generating infrared light with a wavelength of 980 nanometers, or billionths of a meter. But emerging quantum technologies such as optical atomic clocks and quantum computers need laser light in many other colors as well.

The any-wavelength laser uses nonlinear optics — a set of materials and techniques that allow certain materials to absorb light of one color and output other colors. NIST researchers make their laser out of a material called tantala, based on the metallic element tantalum. Tantala is very good at guiding light waves with low losses and can convert incoming laser light at one wavelength into a large range of other light wavelengths.

Very cool to have a truly variable-wavelength light, AND for it to be a laser.

[–] • 1 pt

Yeah, this could be a really big deal depending on if it can scale in every wavelength and be multi-mode on-the-fly (ish).