interesting – if these chips become affordable I could see them being particularly useful in audio equipment as even if you do not rig up the entire computer using the optical chips the hybrid ones could be used for high end digital to analogue converters with far less noise/interference from the power supplies etc and be able to carry out all sorts of clever DSP without excessive lag.
What IBM etc are pitching appears to be a line-driver chip on steroids anyway (the idea being that instead of PCB tracks fibre optic waveguides are used at least at one end of the device) so could easily be adapted for this application
