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I told people 5 years ago this was coming, Optics and CPUS

Well like you said, that has been something suggested for years, apparently now the implimintation is becoming closer to reaching the market.
 
How will it work? Are they using visible light? Infrared? Fiber optic cable? Are they stacking the chips on top of each other? Will the entire motherboard be enclosed in a photo-opaque material? Are they getting rid of fiberglass PCB's? Will they be thicker or thinner? Flexible?
 
I swear to god that while I was taking this semi-conductor course at the University of Illinois the professor told us about this research he (Milton Feng) and his collegues were doing on laser transitors or transistors that "switch on" when a laser is shined on its "gate".


Sorry... Just looked up their research and it seems as if the transistors still "switch on" when a current is applied, but can output a laser in addition to current.
 
There are so many possibilties here is it staggering.

Do any of you remember in The Graduate the old man talking about plastics? He was saying they were the future.

Well today it is Optics


 
Originally posted by: Mayson
I swear to god that while I was taking this semi-conductor course at the University of Illinois the professor told us about this research he (Milton Feng) and his collegues were doing on laser transitors or transistors that "switch on" when a laser is shined on its "gate".


Sorry... Just looked up their research and it seems as if the transistors still "switch on" when a current is applied, but can output a laser in addition to current.
Click to expand...
Milton does a lot of oddball things... and I'd really count this one as Holonyak's ideas which were implemented by Milton's students.

You're completely lopsided on what you're talking about. It seems that you're confusing FETs with HBTs. Holonyak and Milton's InP-based HBT is a transistor that lases from the base and/or base-collector grade while in forward bias. Milton has picked up an odd tendancy in the past few years to publish his group's initial works via press release, the UIUC Web site, and other non-peer-reviewed media... such as this one.

Interesting stuff, but meant more for public consumption rather than usable information for others in the field.

Enjoy.
 

about 6 months ago i modelled a series of RAM heat sinks.

one of them was identical to the new Corsair.

wish i had more $$ to pay prototype machinists !
 
Photonics have been in the work for decades now, issue has always been switching, they were not able to develop fast enough switches. I guess they still haven't solved it (may actually not be solvable) so they go with next best thing, transmit in photonic while keeping rest in silicon.
 
Originally posted by: sdifox
Photonics have been in the work for decades now, issue has always been switching, they were not able to develop fast enough switches. I guess they still haven't solved it (may actually not be solvable) so they go with next best thing, transmit in photonic while keeping rest in silicon.
Click to expand...

There are several ways around it actually. The simplest being to use wavelength division multiplexing. That way instead of having one channel at terabits/s you have hundreds of channels at tens of gigabits/s. This way the switching can be done in a practical sense, this is actually done today.

There are actually two big impediments stopping photonics from becoming more prevalent. First is that there's no easy way to process signals in the optical domain. So you end up having to convert from optical to electrical before doing any processing. You then have to generate a new optical signal; all this makes for expensive switches that are usually limited in speed by the electronics and the conversions between electrical and optical domains.

The next issue is that there is no such thing as an optical buffer or optical memory. Essentially, there's no practical way to store light the way we store charge. The best we can currently do in telecom systems is to use fiber delay lines which is really a poor substitute.

Obviously there's also the fact that silicon is not very good for photonics; namely, it's not a direct bandgap material, hence you can't really lase in silicon. So what you end up needing is another material to serve as a light source, usually III-V semiconductors like GaAs or in Intel's case InP. Getting photonics to play nice with silicon is a major step in mass producing photonic devices, which is why this announcement is generating this much interest.
 
Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
Originally posted by: sdifox
Photonics have been in the work for decades now, issue has always been switching, they were not able to develop fast enough switches. I guess they still haven't solved it (may actually not be solvable) so they go with next best thing, transmit in photonic while keeping rest in silicon.
Click to expand...

There are several ways around it actually. The simplest being to use wavelength division multiplexing. That way instead of having one channel at terabits/s you have hundreds of channels at tens of gigabits/s. This way the switching can be done in a practical sense, this is actually done today.

There are actually two big impediments stopping photonics from becoming more prevalent. First is that there's no easy way to process signals in the optical domain. So you end up having to convert from optical to electrical before doing any processing. You then have to generate a new optical signal; all this makes for expensive switches that are usually limited in speed by the electronics and the conversions between electrical and optical domains.

The next issue is that there is no such thing as an optical buffer or optical memory. Essentially, there's no practical way to store light the way we store charge. The best we can currently do in telecom systems is to use fiber delay lines which is really a poor substitute.

Obviously there's also the fact that silicon is not very good for photonics; namely, it's not a direct bandgap material, hence you can't really lase in silicon. So what you end up needing is another material to serve as a light source, usually III-V semiconductors like GaAs or in Intel's case InP. Getting photonics to play nice with silicon is a major step in mass producing photonic devices, which is why this announcement is generating this much interest.
Click to expand...

I guess I should have used the word gate and not switching. I was not awake and was thinking of a lightswitch for some strange reason. I think they had problems with building a fast logic gate.
 
I have an idea to transport humans over the internet using optics and multiple IPs. When this idea comes to fruition, I expect to be paid royalties - even though I will have no hand in its development.
 
The down side is that you must come up with around $10K and pattern it with USPTO.GOV and show that it works. The pattern will last you for 20 years though. You'll make your money back by either licensing such idea or technology🙂
 
Originally posted by: Laputa
The down side is that you must come up with around $10K and pattern it with USPTO.GOV and show that it works. The pattern will last you for 20 years though. You'll make your money back by either licensing such idea or technology🙂
Click to expand...

Aha - prior art - genius!
 
Felix brought up an interesting point.

What if you do have a fleshed-out, innvovative idea?

You have to invest 10k just to protect it?

EDIT: NM, it is off topic and there is a ton of material on patent law out there.
 
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