Intel and University of California, Santa Barbara researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips.

Chip makers may be able to put the high-speed data communications industry on the same curve of increased processing speed and diminishing costs (Moore’s law) that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades.

They could also give rise to a new class of supercomputers.

The breakthrough was achieved by bonding a layer of light-emitting indium phosphide onto the surface of a standard silicon chip etched with special channels that act as light-wave guides, allowing for a computer chip with possibly thousands of tiny, bright lasers that can be switched on and off billions of times a second.