News Chinese researchers invent silicon photonic multiplexer chip that uses light instead of electricity for communication — CCP says China's early step...

[Admin]

Fudan University researchers have allegedly developed a photonics-based multiplexer chip, supporting up to 38 Tbps data transmission. While not yet a full CPU, Chinese industry observers believe China's big breakthrough in photonics will arrive in "three to five years".

Chinese researchers invent silicon photonic multiplexer chip that uses light instead of electricity for communication — CCP says China's early step... : Read more

 

[cruisetung]

TLTR and not my expertise.

But I think It's truly published on Nature, in March, 3 months ago.

Edge-guided inverse design of digital metamaterial-based mode multiplexers for high-capacity multi-dimensional optical interconnect

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57689-7

 

[EyadSoftwareEngineer]

It’s very obvious that as China has made a breakthrough in car manufacturing with transformative EV technology, moving away from internal combustion engines. China has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t just aim to catch up with current chip technology—it is striving to develop revolutionary distributive technology that will ensure its full dominance. And frankly, China is more than capable of achieving this.

 

[bolweval]

Bugs Bunny; “What’s up doc?”

Martian ; “I’m going to disintegrate you with my silicon photonic integrated high-order mode multiplexer chip”

 

[acadia11]

It’s very obvious that as China has made a breakthrough in car manufacturing with transformative EV technology, moving away from internal combustion engines. China has repeatedly stated that it doesn’t just aim to catch up with current chip technology—it is striving to develop revolutionary distributive technology that will ensure its full dominance. And frankly, China is more than capable of achieving this.

It’s what happens when you spend your time telling kids they are elitist for wanting to go to college. Or spending countless hours arguing about if climate change is real or not, what is real is that fossil fuels are a limited dead end technology and highly inefficient. Let’s have another round of cuts to green incentives and the jobs of the future because that makes sense. Hubris, everything that goes up eventually must come down.

 

[Geef]

>Mostly From story: but the threat of China's Superiority Complex overtaking U.S. photonics development in the long run is very real.

I truly hope they have developed something awesome but really, China is known for saying stuff that is not true and never allowing third party benchmarks.

 

[Kindaian]

No worries, we will all die, and a future race of intelligent cockroaches will inherit the Earth. And they will be burning petrol for heating in a semi-frozen glacier age. Their archeologists will be investigating human skeletons and some weird leftover ICE engines...

And the history will repeat itself.

 

[acadia11]

>Mostly From story: but the threat of China's Superiority Complex overtaking U.S. photonics development in the long run is very real.

I truly hope they have developed something awesome but really, China is known for saying stuff that is not true and never allowing third party benchmarks.

Does it matter, China is historically the most advanced nation in history at almost 5000 years. And Asia has a whole has accounted for nearly most of man’s invention, Not because of ideology, politics, or anything else but because it has had the vast majority of the human population since we moved out of Africa 50,000 years ago. Without getting into to why … suffice to say when more than 60% of the earths population is on one continent and with more than 60% of its brain mass and ton of resources things will get invented there. And China accounts for almost 40% of that Asian population. Whether it was gun powder and rockets, the printing press ironically the internet its day, and a whole host of game changers … the lull in Chinese technological contribution for the last 400 years or so is at an end and things are pretty much returning to the status qou…

 

[koga73]

I'm no expert but seems like this wouldn't make much of a difference because you still need a photo receiver and need to process the light signals into data. So you're basically just replacing the electral traces with fiber optics. The speed of electrons over a wire is fast enough. Unless the light is traveling over a long distance I don't see the benefit.

 

[Reace]

Why do we keep publishing fake claims of Chinese innovation that ALWAYS turn out to be half true or not trye at all?

 

[bolweval]

Why do we keep publishing fake claims of Chinese innovation that ALWAYS turn out to be half true or not trye at all?

Just in case...

 

[dehdstar]

I think "Invent" might be a strong word, considering I read about this technology in either a Popular Science or Popular Mechanics Magazine, back in 2002 lol. Also back around that time, I read about LCDs that can roll up into a pen and unrolled into a display, which is where they got the idea for their retractable tablets in Red Planet. Some sort of neat, flexible "space-age" materials invented by NASA. A sort of silvery and almost foil-like display.

 

[Xwanglabs]

Chinese researchers are under a huge pressure to produce, it’s ultra competitive for start and needs to “benefit the people” ideologically. There’s always a certain amount of”this changes everything !!!” marketing hype in the mixture … nonetheless it may be important. They take photonics very seriously.

 

[CNman]

Why do we keep publishing fake claims of Chinese innovation that ALWAYS turn out to be half true or not trye at all?

Indeed. If you go to China or watch videos made people went there, you will know China is very underdeveloped place, people riding horses and claiming it’s a high speed train. Companies make phones looks different outside but inside it’s still a Nokia phone core from 1990s. Chinese haven’t known anything about chips let along changing the whole chips design. China is exactly as you see on western media.