"Intel has produced a prototype chip that could take a lot of the manual labor out of manufacturing optical equipment toward the end of the decade.
The chip, called a 1GHz silicon modulator, essentially takes filtered laser light and chops it into a data stream of ones and zeros that then travels down a fiber-optic cable. Because the chip made of silicon it is potentially cheap to manufacture. But it can theoretically provide performance equal to existing modulator technology that's made of more exotic materials, said Victor Krutul, senior manager of silicon photonics strategy at Intel."
Source:
Zdnet