A. Jørgensen, D. Kong, L. K. Oxenløwe—and their team successfully showed a data transmission of 1.84 petabits over a 7.9km fibre cable using just a single chip.That's not quite as fast as some other alternatives with larger, bulkier systems, which have reached up to 10.66 petabits, but the key here is scale: the proposed system is very compact.Instead of multiple lasers in parallel, which come with their own set of challenges, it's possible to shrink a good deal of this equipment to the silicon level.These are not only useful for shrinking down the requirements for a system such as this, but have also recently seen breakthroughs when added to CMOS chips (opens in new tab).In fact, a whole lot more could be added to a CMOS chip to make this whole system even more integrated, says Jørgensen."