Optical Computer Prototype
optalysys.com
Optical Computer Prototype
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#2I think the submission here on HN has overdone it on the title.
It doesn't compute "flops" like a traditional computer. The relevant text from the article:
"The prototype achieves a processing speed equivalent to 320 Gflops and it is incredibly energy efficient as it uses low-powered, cost effective components."
I am as interested as anybody in switching out for photons instead of electrons/holes. But please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#3Isn't 320 GFLOPs kinda slow? An NVIDIA GeForce GTX
Titan Z can crank out 8122 SP GFLOPs for comparison.
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#4If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#5If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
>If photons and electrons travel at the same speed
"If" - they do not! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_mobility
Quoting from the above source...
>Typical electron mobility for Si at room temperature (300 K) is 1400 cm2/ (V·s) and the hole mobility is around 450 cm2/ (V·s).[2]
However this is besides the point since electric fields in a conductor do move at the speed of light.
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#6If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
The article refers to lower power requirements. One of the problems of higher clock rates is heat dissipation; if this runs a lot cooler, then it might be able to clock much higher.
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#7If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
Electrons have mass they can't move at the speed of light.
Photons also have other nice properties such as wavelength which open a whole suit of possibilities e.g. like having a logic gate which can operate in different mods based on the wavelength and polarization of the light.
While this is technically possible with electronics as well by setting a different voltage limit it's much more effective with photonic computing and doesn't not increase the complexity of your base components as much.
The current designs for a photonic computer are also much more parallel most of them basically layers of LED's and detectors with a very fast LCD matrix which serves as a mask between them. if you have a 256x256 pixel screen you can perform an operation on 65536 bits in a single clock, if you stack them up you basically getting 1 order of magnitude with each layer this isn't something you could ever achieve with current solid state electronics.
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#8Isn't 320 GFLOPs kinda slow? An NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z can crank out 8122 SP GFLOPs for comparison.
That's the proof of concept prototype. If they achieve their stated targets, it would be a leap in computing capability.
http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve...
"The analysis unit works in tandem with a traditional supercomputer. Initial models will start at 1.32 petaflops and will ramp up to 300 petaflops by 2020.
The Optalysys Optical Solver Supercomputer will initially offer 9 petaflops of compute power, increasing to 17.1 exaflops by 2020."
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#9This appears to basically be an analog optical computer - it inputs some 2D data using an LCD, puts it through a bunch of optical transforms, and then captures the output with a camera. This probably does have some kind of obscure use cases where it makes sense, but it's very hard to compete with modern silicon for raw compute using some kind of hybrid method - moving data in and out of the optical part is just painful compared to keeping it all digital/electrical. The main problem is that computers today aren't actually slow =)
Re: Optical Computer Prototype
#10If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
Electrons have mass they can't move at the speed of light. Photons also have other nice properties such as wavelength which open a whole suit of possibilities e.g. like having a logic gate which can operate in different mods based on the wavelength and polarization of the light. While this is technically possible with electronics as well by setting a different voltage limit it's much more effective with photonic comp…
What fraction of the speed of light are electrons moving at in the most advanced silicon chip we have? Trying to understand how much speed is left on the table for us to pick up in serial processing?