No, it's not Dr. Evil and his quotation-mark fingers, but an advance in computer processing by Intel and UC Santa Barbara that may promise to create a step-change in computing speeds. According to the companies, and an article in today's New York Times, their researchers have developed the first viable Hybrid Silicon Laser -- a computer chip that can process data input and output via laser light rather than over wires. The big deal is that by moving from wire to light, data transmission speeds, and therefore processing speeds, within a computer by a factor of 100 or more, but at significantly lower costs as well.

The result would be "optical" computing that, when scaled to the size of a data center, could provide massive leaps in computing speeds to match those advances in optical transmission for larger communications infrastructures.

Quoting Intel and UCSB:

"This could bring low-cost, terabit-level optical 'data pipes' inside future computers and help make possible a new era of high-performance computing applications," said Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab. "While still far from becoming a commercial product, we believe dozens, maybe even hundreds of hybrid silicon lasers could be integrated with other silicon photonic components onto a single silicon chip."

Is this a big deal or just another "breakthrough" announcement? The researchers involved characterize it as one of the last remaining barriers to fall in silicon photonics and effectively opens this new area of computing for exploitation.

For those really interested in the inner workings of the new "laser" chips, put on your Dr. Evil coat and click on Intel's description.