Light based circuitry

[Paratus]

Interesting topic,

Strangely enought I just read an article on this in this months Scientific American. It looks like they are getting close to manufacturing optical components using modified CMOS production methods. Meaning next gen mobos could combine electical traces and waveguides to feed the processor.

They had one blurb on a possible optical replacement for USB2.0 running at 245Gbps !!!!

Light is definatly the way to go for moving data.

 

[oldman420]

Originally posted by: Paratus
Interesting topic,

Strangely enought I just read an article on this in this months Scientific American. It looks like they are getting close to manufacturing optical components using modified CMOS production methods. Meaning next gen mobos could combine electical traces and waveguides to feed the processor.

They had one blurb on a possible optical replacement for USB2.0 running at 245Gbps !!!!

Light is definatly the way to go for moving data.

I thought so,
With photons there also would be no electrical resistance to create heat and due to the speed of light, CPU's could be made larger without the speed/distance issues....that way you would have an unlimited die size and much lower power consumption IMO

Imagine packing 100 billion transistors equivalent into a 3 x 3 inch cube.

 

[RelaxTheMind]

Yes one has been made and by now is probably in production. The article is here:

http://us.cnn.com/2003/TECH/pt...enslet.reut/index.html

It states that its uses are basically for military or weather station applications.

"The processor performs 8 trillion operations per second, equivalent to a super-computer and 1,000 times faster than standard processors, with 256 lasers performing computations at light speed."

now if we only had Windows XP LightSpeed edition.

Finally a processor that will make the all mighty resource hog "windows" seem non-existant.

vicflo

 

[oldman420]

http://www.lenslet.com/products.asp

well I'le be jiggered batman