From Barrons: But then Murry tells me one of the problems is the overriding preoccupation of Wall Street with the flashiest new technology, such as “silicon photonics,” where optical waveguides can be fashioned on a piece of silicon, rather than as discrete optical components:
There’s a strong feeling among some investors or analysts that there’s some new technology out there that is going to radically change the way optical modules are manufactured, or the cost model. You hear about silicon photonics or various new designs. And I understand why investors look at those things. They are focused on the product itself. There must be some cool new thing that is going to radically alter the way this industry works. I’m a technology guy, I have a background in electrical engineering. These technologies that other companies are talking about, like silicon photonics, these are not new things, we’ve been talking about them for a long time. The way I look at it, these different technologies are useful tools to solve certain problems. Silicon photonics is a good way to make certain kinds of high-speed modules, well in excess of 100 gigabits per second, as long as you keep the distance of those signals very small. But from a cost perspective, it’s not obvious, and to AOI it’s obviously not a cost-competitive solution at 100G. As you go to higher speeds, the calculus can change. The assumption on the part of investors is that new tech always displaces old tech, and that’s not always the case.
Silicon photonics is indeed something being talked about in many corners of the chip and the fiber worlds, and so ask Murry if perhaps he's downplaying the true importance of it.
Investors, responds Murry, over-estimate the connection between silicon photonics and the world of fiber-optic communications:
Moore’s Law has to do with the increasing density of transistors on a silicon substrate. Silicon photonics has nothing to do with transistors. The best I can come up with is, it’s silicon, and everyone knows it’s cheap, and so that’s where the analysis ends. The truth is that silicon has gone a long way because there’s been the technology to make smaller and smaller features. Optics is a whole different animal. For one thing, the features are many orders of magnitude larger. Wave guides are measured in millimeters or centimeters. I try to be very open about it all, but there is no obvious correlation between more and more transistors on silicon, and using silicon waveguides to shape light. Silicon waveguides are not CMOS [complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, the most prevalent material of traditional chips]. They require process steps not involved in CMOS. One can’t just make silicon waveguides like that.