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New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#11

Post by neltnerb »

sleepy_keita wrote: post #3
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #2

Does this work at normal temperatures? Or does it need impractical cooling setups?

> the new optical switch works at room temperature

These sound a lot like room temperature optical qubits... I'm certain I am missing something but this sounds pretty neat.

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#12

Post by api »

dogber1 wrote: post #5

In 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…

Couldn't this perhaps be useful for specialized compute problems that can be represented as a combinatorial system of optical gates/switches? It would be something useful for a specialized subset of problems, sort of like quantum computing.

QC is also not going to replace general purpose electronic computers but augment them for certain classes of problems.

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#13

Post by pg_bot »

dogber1 wrote: post #5

In 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…

Isn't this just a trade off? Is there never a scenario where you would trade transistor density for switching speed and lower power consumption?

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#14

Post by brokensegue »

neltnerb wrote: post #11
sleepy_keita wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new optical switch works at room temperature

These sound a lot like room temperature optical qubits... I'm certain I am missing something but this sounds pretty neat.

they aren't quantum

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#15

Post by Retric »

dogber1 wrote: post #5

In 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…

~400nm for waveguides isn’t that big of an issue. Optical computing may be relighted to stuff like DSP, but that’s still a vast market.

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#16

Post by corndoge »

dogber1 wrote: post #10
anko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 requir…

> 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#17

Post by perihelions »

I *think* this is a recent-ish preprint of the same paper they're talking about. (The current Nature version is neither open-access nor accessible on Sci-Hub).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.05811

(E.g., both papers contain this [0] text string pointing to the same URI. But, the arXiv preprint doesn't mention the Nature submission).

[0] "All data supporting this study are openly available from the University of Southampton repository at https://doi.org/10.5258/SOTON/D1374."

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#18

Post by namibj »

dogber1 wrote: post #10
anko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 requir…

That sounds like a derivate of MPLS, where labelsa re only stripped along the path.

Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors

#19

Post by tragictrash »

dogber1 wrote: post #5

In 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…

This sounds to me like doctors claiming they know so much about the human body when in reality we are at the infancy of our understanding
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