One of the nastiest open secrets in the Internet is the switching bottleneck.

Optical fibers move data at, well, light-speed. But electricity moves data much more slowly. Getting between the two is like trying to get onto a freeway from an old cloverleaf junction -- there's not enough of an acceleration lane.

Many companies, including Intel, have been working this problem for a long time. Photonic switching is already a reality. But linking silicon directly to optics remains elusive.

That's the heart of Intel's claimed breakthrough, announced yesterday. Intel managed to produce a full Raman effect on silicon. This should enable Intel to build lasers just as chips are built.

Right now electronic signals have to be multiplexed, and packaged, before getting into the optical net. It's a very expensive, complex process. It's one of the chief capital costs a telecommunications provider faces.

But if PCs had their own photonics, they could plug directly into fiber and, as their processing speeds increased, take full advantage of what fiber can do. You could even have photonic processing inside silicon chips. Voila -- no bottleneck.

That's the hope, anyway. As Alan Huang, a 20-year veteran of this silicon laser business points out, "it's a neat science experiment" and there's a long way to go before this shows up on your desktop.

Still, imagine the implications, as Intel is now doing. Tom's Hardware Guide reports:

"99 percent of the world is still copper," said Dr. Mario Paniccia, Director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab. Backbone and long data transmission infrastructures with ranges from 300 feet to about 45 miles today are implemented via fiber optics. Rack-to-rack, board-to-board and chip-to-chip connections however are copper-based, mainly because of cost factors. Intel's research results could change this scenario and move high-bandwidth laser technologies down to a chip level.

As with all real breakthroughs, what Intel did in the end was fairly simple. They just powered up the silicon.

Silicon wasn't able to handle light because electrons were knocked out of their orbits when they got hit by two photons at the same time, which is basic to creating the Raman effect on which laser beams are based.

Intel managed to draw all electrons to one side of the silicon by applying a power source around it. This cleared the way for photons and allowed creation of a pure laser beam in the silicon that carries data matching its wavelength.

And, since silicon can move data at centimeter distances (and below), what you get here is photonic unity.

But all in time, grasshopper. Moore's Law gives laboratory breakthroughs several years to make it into products. They do, though. They do.