The Promising Future of Silicon Photonics

"What's Silicon Photonics? and how can this thing might be a replacement to current electronics?  With the intel researchers achieving a firing 50Gbps, this may be hold the future of almost every gadget you may be using now.........." 

The idea of silicon photonics is to enhance the speed of present day microprocessors many folds by replacing electrons in wires to beams of light flitting through microscopic channels on a silicon chip.This gives us the precise idea behind optical computing. The basic unit of a microprocessor is a transistor and researchers are engaged in re-engineering the transistor using controlled flow of light through optical fibers. This light is to be produced by lasers or diodes.

"Replacing the slow electrons to lightening fast photons....!" 

The larger bandwidth of photons allows high speed transfers and eliminates the limitation of metals like copper which are prone to signal degradation when data is transferred over long distances
There are numerous achievements in this field and the ongoing research promises of even more. Notable is the achievement of intel researchers who have developed a silicon-based, optical data connection prototype capable of transferring up to 50 gigabits per second.
 complete news on intel hitting the 50 gbps mark
Moreover the researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in photonics by engineering an all optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. What’s more? They have combined these photonic switches to make a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.
Complete news on Penn University’s photonic research.
But it seems it will take a little long for the complete implementation of this idea because a breakthrough this big may take years or decades more to overrule the firmly established electronics...

It seems photonics hold a bright future because when we can transfer at a rate of 50Gbps the idea of 3D video conferences and unbelievably fast computers strikes our mind,  however it is a worth mention here that currently this is in development phase and is meant to be used only as a test vehicle because the challenge is to create an "all-optical"device eliminating the need of opto-electronic interfaces that in fact make the current use of this technology completely feasible over the present day all-electronic machines.
 Furthermore driving heavy motors,speakers and other mechanical devices seems too difficult a task to be done using these low powered photons.