On a scale of zero to really big deal. How much of a big deal is this?
It's an incremental step in a good direction.
After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
21–30 of 108 posts
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#22Super cool -- one challenge will be that in order to live on the hot processors of today, these emitters will need to still work at around 400K -- the good news is that these appear to still work well at around 300K -- but it sounds like these go to nearly no bandgap at higher temperatures and shift into the infrafred. But yea, pretty awesome stuff..
Wouldn't infrared be acceptable for data transmission?
Not sure how applicable it is, but the IrDA (Infrared Data Association) protocol tops out at only 16Mbps.
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#23Super cool -- one challenge will be that in order to live on the hot processors of today, these emitters will need to still work at around 400K -- the good news is that these appear to still work well at around 300K -- but it sounds like these go to nearly no bandgap at higher temperatures and shift into the infrafred. But yea, pretty awesome stuff..
Wouldn't infrared be acceptable for data transmission?
it depends how infrared
(from memory) Current fibers have a dispersion minimum ~1300 nm and an attenuation minimum ~ 1550 nm
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#24> Modern transistors, which function as a computer’s brain cells Who's the target audience for this analogy? If you understand what a brain cell is then you probably know what a transistor is too. I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is.
You don't need to know the details of a brain cell to get the analogy. If I say "transistor" to my mom, she wouldn't be able to tell me what it is. If I say "It's like the brain cells for the computer", she would probably understand that "Ah, so a computer has many transistors that helps it think", which seems good enough for an article with a broad audience. > I would bet that more people know what a transistor is t…
A CPU do not think. It follows precise instructions.
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#25> Modern transistors, which function as a computer’s brain cells Who's the target audience for this analogy? If you understand what a brain cell is then you probably know what a transistor is too. I would bet that more people know what a transistor is than what a brain cell is.
The whole article is like this (facepalm)
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The source paper[1], "Single-chip microprocessor that communicates directly using light" may be closer to your preferred level. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16454.epdf
It seems to be paywalled, though.
There is a DOI at the top/right of the paywalled version - just plug that into SciHub (I just verified it's there)
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#27Super cool -- one challenge will be that in order to live on the hot processors of today, these emitters will need to still work at around 400K -- the good news is that these appear to still work well at around 300K -- but it sounds like these go to nearly no bandgap at higher temperatures and shift into the infrafred. But yea, pretty awesome stuff..
Wouldn't infrared be acceptable for data transmission?
Basically all fiber data transmission is done in the near-IR between 800 and 1600 nm.
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to know the details of a brain cell to get the analogy. If I say "transistor" to my mom, she wouldn't be able to tell me what it is. If I say "It's like the brain cells for the computer", she would probably understand that "Ah, so a computer has many transistors that helps it think", which seems good enough for an article with a broad audience. > I would bet that more people know what a transistor is t…
I would take that bet, too. If you say “transistor” to non-technical people over 50 or so, they more likely would think of small portable radios ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio ). To them, and many others, computers don’t have transistors, they have chips. They _might_ know the transistor replaced vacuum tubes, but I doubt many would be able to tell what function either had, or be able to point out…
Is that a USA/North America thing, based on calling radio sets "transistor radios"?
Here in the UK we had "the wireless", and I'm confident that my parents - late 70s - who were the generation of first domestic computer ownership in the UK would associate "transistor" primarily with computers.
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#29On a scale of zero to really big deal. How much of a big deal is this?
Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... And I'm talking about a fully photonic cpu, not an hybrid one that has a light/electricity translation cost.
Re: After 50 years of effort, researchers made silicon emit light
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would take that bet, too. If you say “transistor” to non-technical people over 50 or so, they more likely would think of small portable radios ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio ). To them, and many others, computers don’t have transistors, they have chips. They _might_ know the transistor replaced vacuum tubes, but I doubt many would be able to tell what function either had, or be able to point out…
Is that a USA/North America thing, based on calling radio sets "transistor radios"? Here in the UK we had "the wireless", and I'm confident that my parents - late 70s - who were the generation of first domestic computer ownership in the UK would associate "transistor" primarily with computers.
Definitely not just a USA thing, "transistor" also meant "transistor radio" in Russian back in the day.
(E.g. this song from 1982: https://learnsongs.ru/song/dinamik-na-plyazhe-pleshchet-voln...)