"Demonstrating photonics

Under the NASA project, Krainak and his team will reduce the size of the terminal, now about the size of two toaster ovens. Although the modem is expected to use some optic fibre, ILLUMA is the first step in building and demonstrating an integrated photonics circuit that ultimately will embed these functions onto a chip, he said.

"What we want to do is provide a faster exchange of data to the scientific community. Modems have to be inexpensive. They have to be small. We also have to keep their weight down," Krainak said. The goal is to develop and demonstrate the technology and then make it available to industry and other government agencies, creating an economy of scale that will further drive down costs. "This is the pay off," he said.

Integrated photonics' impact on terrestrial uses is equally profound, Krainak added. One such use is with datacentres. These costly, very large facilities house servers that are connected by fiber optic cable to store, manage and distribute data. "Google, Facebook, they're all starting to look at this technology," Krainak said. "As integrated photonics progresses to be more cost effective than fibre optics, it will be used," Krainak said. "Everything is headed this way."

http://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/article/98628-nasa-to-build-first-integrated-photonics-modem.html