Due to the “interconnect bottleneck”, sometime in the next decade, computers, regardless of their processing speed, will be incapable of moving data any faster. UC Berkeley engineers have recently developed a possible solution: a way to grow nanolasers directly onto a silicon surface and take advantage of the superior data carrying capacity of photons. The new technique could lead to highly efficient silicon photonics. As well as leading to faster computers, the nanolasers are expected to allow the engineering of new types of on-chip nanophotonic devices such as lasers, photodetectors, modulators and solar cells.