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New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

arstechnica.com

1–8 of 8 posts

Re: New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

#3
> The processor itself is a dual core RISC-V, an architecture used in academic circles; it's capable of operating in the gigahertz range.

It's nice to see RISC-V getting adopted more and more. I wonder how long it will take until I will own a product with one or more RISC-V processors.

Re: New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

#5

    Moving data around inside a computer means shoving it 
    through wires, which have inherent bandwidth 
    limitations and produce a lot of heat. Once that data     
    hits a network, however, it often runs across optical 
    hardware, which can send information long distances 
    at high bandwidth without needing a dedicated nuclear 
    reactor for power.
is the goal reduced power consumption?

Re: New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

#6
post #3

> The processor itself is a dual core RISC-V, an architecture used in academic circles; it's capable of operating in the gigahertz range. It's nice to see RISC-V getting adopted more and more. I wonder how long it will take until I will own a product with one or more RISC-V processors.

This paper uses the open-source Rocket-chip processor (https://github.com/ucb-bar/rocket-chip), which is the same processor being used (and modified) by lowRISC. So hopefully you can buy RISC-V in the not-to-distant future!

Re: New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

#7

Moving data around inside a computer means shoving it through wires, which have inherent bandwidth limitations and produce a lot of heat. Once that data hits a network, however, it often runs across optical hardware, which can send information long distances at high bandwidth without needing a dedicated nuclear reactor for power. is the goal reduced power consumption?

It's both increased bandwidth and lower energy. It'd be useless if it blew the thermal budget to achieve the higher bandwidth.

Re: New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

#8
post #7

Moving data around inside a computer means shoving it through wires, which have inherent bandwidth limitations and produce a lot of heat. Once that data hits a network, however, it often runs across optical hardware, which can send information long distances at high bandwidth without needing a dedicated nuclear reactor for power. is the goal reduced power consumption?

It's both increased bandwidth and lower energy. It'd be useless if it blew the thermal budget to achieve the higher bandwidth.

can you explain the mechanism for the bandwidth increase?

do the photovoltaics act as logic gates? doing calculations?

if the mechanism that is controlling the optics is electric:both transmitting and receiving; it would seem the throughput would be the same as pure electric

i understand fiber optic because light will travel a longer distance faster than an electric field propagated through wire, but these chips are built using atomic scale welding techniques(i)

(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4&feature=youtu.be...