A simple scheme, but it works for me. I offer it for posterity and/or public ridicule.

Stream of consciousness based on:

• last meal eaten
• amount of sleep the previous week
• current interest
• filling what's empty
• emptying what's full and
• scratching where it itches (conceptually speaking)

The major key in the sort would have to be current interest. Those go to the top o' the heap. (real men use real heaps, not virtual ones)

Sheer whimsy is the secondary key.

Boredom is the terminating condition.

First, APD's have been around for years; their vacuum cousins are called photo-multipliers.

Second, the article states electron pairs; that should be amended to electron-hole pairs. When a photon whacks into a lattice, it ejects an electron, leaving a hole. This absence of an electron can be filled by a nearby electron, so the hole moves, rather like a hole in a crowd.

The important parts (pointed out by other posters, also), are that:

• Intel gets bragging rights for significant technology and fabrication advances
• It just got way cheaper to put high speed communications on a chip or in a system
• Intel is working on optical plumbing (waveguides) for the chip level
• The spin-off company may become another publicly traded company
• The technology used is incremental, and has less risks to implement

In all, life just got more interesting; we just have to wait about five years for this to be in regular production