Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Are they polarized photons though?
New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
21–30 of 94 posts
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#22In 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?
Yes. IIRC, amd chips have been beating intel chips for a while now on transistor sizes but intel even with larger transistors still have a greater density on a chip (maybe it's changed in the latest gen).
Another benefit of lower density is cooling.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#23In 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…
That argument doesn't make sense to me.
You can just choose to use light at a smaller wavelength.
Also, less density by itself doesn't mean less performance, the larger optical components can just run faster to end up with higher overal performance.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#24In 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…
If it is lower power, going 3d with it makes more sense though. Brain structures like synapses are ~2x smaller than UVC wavelengths or so (cubing that, ~10x smaller).
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#25In 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…
That argument doesn't make sense to me. You can just choose to use light at a smaller wavelength. Also, less density by itself doesn't mean less performance, the larger optical components can just run faster to end up with higher overal performance.
In principle, yes, but:
- lower wavelength light is harder to confine within waveguides (or transmissive optics), and messes up atoms when colliding (think of x-rays),
- finding an efficient source at lower wavelengths is one of the main struggles of the semiconductor industry.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#26In 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…
You can't directly compare optical and electrical compute through looking at the difference in feature densities. Optical compute will most likely take the form of analog waveforms that contain many bits of information, whereas electronics for computing is inherently binary.
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#27It's very regrettable the author of this article omitted the citation to the paper. Why did they do that?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#28From the discussion here, it sounds like this is going to be a specialized tool for now. Perhaps we'll end up seeing optical/ic hybrid chips before too long
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#29In 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?
That's indeed done all the time in electronics: for example, RF CMOS usually trailing on a node three or four generations behind the bleeding edge.
However, all-optical/photonic computing is just intrinsically so much worse than electronics. On top of the issues that I touched on, there are also other fundamental problems, e.g. distribution of power: photons like to get absorbed by nearby electrons. How do you then supply all the active devices (switches/lasers/etc.) with power while maintaining some semblance of signal integrity and dense integration?
Re: New Optical Switch Up to 1000x Faster Than Transistors
#30In 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…
You can't directly compare optical and electrical compute through looking at the difference in feature densities. Optical compute will most likely take the form of analog waveforms that contain many bits of information, whereas electronics for computing is inherently binary.
I'm afraid that's not even remotely true. Just two counterexamples:
- MLC flash storage devices use multiple levels to store/retrieve bits [1], - Lots of control systems are implemented with analog PIDs [2]. A trivial example is a jellybean voltage regulator that computes the adjustments needed to maintain a stable output voltage independent of the load.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell [2] https://control.com/textbook/closed-loop-control/analog-elec...