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- <text id=91TT1029>
- <title>
- May 13, 1991: Business Notes:Technology
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- May 13, 1991 Crack Kids
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 47
- Business Notes
- TECHNOLOGY
- Beginning to See the Light
- </hdr><body>
- <p> "Optoelectronic integrated circuit" may sound like high-tech
- mumbo jumbo, but Texas Instruments is betting that it will soon
- be as familiar a term as computer chip. Last week the
- Dallas-based electronics firm announced the development of the
- first OEIC, a chip that transmits information not through the
- cumbersome contemporary method of electrons passing along
- silicon pathways, but rather through the simplest medium of all:
- light.
- </p>
- <p> When the light chip reaches the marketplace, sometime
- within the next 10 years, it will be more compact and up to 20
- times as fast as its silicon equivalent. Result: electronic
- equipment that is quicker, smaller and cheaper, in everything
- from cars to kitchens to wristwatches. The race for a light chip
- has been under way for years, and though Texas Instruments is
- the first to produce one, it still hasn't crossed the real
- finish line: practical consumer application.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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