New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
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New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
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Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#2Does this work at normal temperatures? Or does it need impractical cooling setups?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#3Does this work at normal temperatures? Or does it need impractical cooling setups?
> the new optical switch works at room temperature
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#4If this is the transistor moment what technology would an IC equivalent require?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#5In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at a wavelength (hundreds of nm), whereas electrical wires can be much smaller (But just like graphene, carbon nanotubes, and other fads, you can publish fancy papers with it.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#6In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at…
Would it be possible to circumvent this problem with something like squeezed light? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezed_states_of_light)
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#7In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at…
how about for an optical switch? for switching network packets over fibre?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#8In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at…
Would it be possible to circumvent this problem with something like squeezed light? ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezed_states_of_light )
No - that's just a neat trick to enhance the precision in the measurement of non-commuting observable quantities of interest.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#9In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at…
But isn't a fundamentally different type of computation? A type of computation that might be faster even at lower density?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#10In reality, all-optical computing is mostly a terrible idea: fundamentally, it cannot reach the integration density of electronics. It boils down to the elementary differences between Fermions (electrons, neutrons, etc.) and Bosons (photons, etc.). Their intrinsic behavior determines the interaction with matter, i.e. conductive/absorptive properties. As a result, optical wires (waveguides) have to be sized roughly at…
how about for an optical switch? for switching network packets over fibre?
Switching/routing usually requires significant information processing (e.g. decode packet header, match destination address against routing tables, etc.). This necessitates 10k or more gates. All-optical computing can't deliver this level of integration density, nor the performance at reasonable power levels.
Maybe there will be some smart way to pre-encode routing information onto packets to reduce processing requirements, but I doubt that such a network could scale.