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Georgina Prodhan

Computer scientists say they've managed to more efficiently convert electrical signals into light pulses, paving the way for supercomputers to one day fit on a single chip.

Using light rather than wires to connect processing cores on microchips will allow leaps in computer power, an industry scientist says. But that will be at least 10-15 years away

Scientists from computer giant IBM say they have produced electro-optic modulators 100 to 1000 times smaller than comparable silicon photonics modulators and small enough to fit on a processor chip.

They publish their research in the journal Optics Express.

By connecting processing cores on a chip by light instead of wires, the researchers say that problems of high energy consumption and heat generated by multi-core chips could be bypassed, enabling leaps in computing power.

they have connected hundreds or thousands of processing cores on a tiny chip.

there are nine cores on the chips that power computer games consoles.