[wmf]

Intel has a habit of putting out PR that mixes stuff that is available now, stuff that will be shipping this year, and stuff that may or may not be shipping five years from now. The press loves it but it's annoying and confusing to us technical people. (Whatever you do, do not pay any attention to "rack scale architecture".)

When it comes to silicon photonics specifically, Intel has been talking about it for years and still hasn't shipped anything.

[DiabloD3]

Yeah what happened to that? It looked interesting and completely vanished off the face of the Earth.

[wmf]

Making silicon photonics cheaper than VCSELs must be really hard because it seems like nobody is shipping them. Or maybe silicon photonics are only cost-effective for parallel fiber optics which are a pretty small fraction of the market.