Business Notes

"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.

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.