Optical Microchip Breakthrough In Canada? 62
_J_ writes: "The Toronto Star has This Article on their Web site about method to "trap light." Since they call it a break-through to making an optical system it implies that light can be stored in a type of memory. I hope that this implies light-using logical gates." While this sounds like one more Holy Grail Found! announcement, the work that professors Ozin and John (mentioned in article) have done makes it sound like they're no slouches in the photonics or nanotech departments.
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:2)
A photon is an oscillating series of electrical and magnetic feilds. Static electricity is an electric feild, which would affect both. Not quite as much as an electron or it's associated EM feild, but both nonetheless
Don't you see (Score:2)
This could be the first step towards a viable petrification technique.
Re:'Light of Other Days' / slow glass (Score:1)
thanks
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:3)
> they have mass and therefore they travel
> slightly slower then the speed of light.
But it isn't the speed of the electrons that counts, it's the speed of the electrical signals, which is much faster. It's similar to a wave in a tank of water, which travels faster than any particular little blob of water travels.
The real advantages of optical technology are that they can be made much smaller because photons are bosons and electrons are fermions. Two identical bosons (such as photons) can be in the same place at the same time, but two identical fermions (such as electrons) cannot - this is the known as the Pauli exclusion principle.
Article with more details. (Score:2)
http://newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/149716. html [newsbytes.com]
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Re:'Light of Other Days' / slow glass (Score:1)
Duh.
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:1)
There breakthrough still has not gone through any scientific testing (or it at least was not reported) to backup their claim.
Most great scientific breakthroughs have actually been exposed to rigorous experimentation by thrid parties to prove or disprove their validity. This is the driving force behind the scientific method. The ability to recreate results, no proof of this is mentioned anywhere in the article.
So while as tempting and wonderful as this sounds I am chalking it up to some sensationalistic science. But I do hope that when it comes up to experimental review of the process that it does stand up to it.
..but. (Score:1)
Thats just my opionon after hearing a talk by the student mentioned in the article. That was a couple of months ago, so maybe somethings changed.....
What's Really Going On Here? (Score:1)
How do we know that these so-called "Photonic" scientists aren't actually creating black holes with the intention of destroying the world? Has anyone checked to make sure that they aren't under alien mind-control?
Re:Yay nature. (Score:1)
Opal definition (Score:2)
The opals mentioned in the article won't be precious stones. They were growing pores in silicon, creating opals composed of silicon. Opals, by definition, are materials that transmit light and contain small pores of diameter approximately equal to the wavelength of one color light.
For example, create saphirre with small 500 nm diameter pores. Now when you shine light through the saphirre, most of the frequencies of light transmit straight through the material, except for green light. Since the wavelength of green light (500 nm) is the same as the pore size, the pores scatter the green light. This gives the opal a glowing green look. For other colors, you make pores of size equal to the wavelength that you want the opal to be.
In this article, they talk about making pores in silicon, so the opals would be made out of silicon...hardly a precious stone.
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more details (Score:5)
For those of you who just want pretty pictures, here [icmm.csic.es] are some images of the opals.
Here's the ultimate resource [nec.com] for photonic bandgap materials.
So that should give you more then enough to visit & read. Basically what these materials do is prevent propagation of light of a specific frequency in 3-dimensions. The 'bandgap' of the light can be controlled during the fabrication process allowing these things to block different frequencies. So you could imagine placing one of these materials into an optical fibre & selectively blocking one of the data streams but allowing all others to pass through unimpeded. The current breakthrough is twofold, first these aren't imaginary, they've been made & tested and they aren't decades removed from insertion into optical networks, they're months or years from it, second, this is the first example of a 3D PBG material, previous versions have generally been 2D. One of the neater experiments performed involved putting liquid crystals into the opal holes & then by putting an electric field across the liquid crystals, controlling the transmission through the crystal. A variable transmission photonic bandgap device. Light is fast, electrons are slow, an all optical network would be blazingly fast & these devices bring us a step closer to making that happen.
CJM
Photon Localization and Photon Band Gaps (Score:1)
Prof. John was on my thesis committee but my work was on other stuff.
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:1)
In addition to the technological limitations of photonic computing, we are a long way from fabricating these materials on a length scale that will work for even a rudimentary application, such as a waveguide. As the article states on the first page, their silica structure has "a typical single domain size of 100 um". The templates are brittle (they are essentially artificial opals) and the defect control is nearly impossible. Defects in the material grossly affect the behavior, that is, whether they behave like a photonic band gap material or a waveguide or whatever.
I think another promising route that isnt mentioned here is covered in Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography Nature 2000, 404, 53-56 [ Abstract [nature.com]. Free registration required]. Rather than using an opal for a template, they have complete control over the shape of the void lattice by the holographic interference of several lasers in a polymer matrix which is replaced by a high refractive-index semiconductor.
implies that light can be stored (Score:1)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:1)
In defense of their work, the phenomena that they report have been adequately demonstrated in the paper and have been duplicated by other groups. Their work is subject to peer review and the reputation of the scientists is quite high. Therefore, I don't think that the validity but the short-term usefulness is in doubt here. However, as other posters have commented, I dont believe that this work is as much of a breakthrough as it was touted in the media.
Silicon IS a precious stone (Score:1)
And that's NOT including all the times the construction may have failed.
So, when they do finally get a porous silicon wafer, it will indeed be a precious stone!
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
I stand corrected... (Score:1)
In an effort to redeem myself, I found a really interesting and readable web page [pbs.org]. According to it... So silicon might still not be precious because of the "has enjoyed the highest esteem since antiquity" bit. The article is a little vague about what exactly a gemstone is, but Silicon fits the descriptions of a Gemstone on the page. As our computers begin to operate on light in the future, it'd be good to know the value of stuff is inside 'em.
I would love to have a ring with an exposed silicon chip instead of a gemstone. I know that current manufacturing processes would make it nearly impossible (hence, REALLY expensive), but having an entire ring from a single crystal of Silicon would be way COOL!! (just for geekiness purposes)
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Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Re:Oh, I almost missed the joke on this one (Score:1)
Wishful thinking (Score:5)
Material research has a strong component of wishful thinking and future projections. So many things don't work out because of a few insurmountable details. You need strong sources of motivation to pursue the dire road to success.
In their reasoning and justification of their work, these guys live at least 10 years into the future all the time. The referenced article was probably written by someone who took all their statements at face value. It looks to me as if they still have a long way to go. That's not meant to diminish their merits - these scientist are certainly top notch researchers and their results are truly very impressive. I just don't think they have delivered an imminent disruptive technology.
It's commonly accepted that the existence of a laboratory setup does not guarantee the technological and economical viability of any particular solution in the real world. I would start preparing for an imminent disruptive technology if a successful prototype system did exist. Yet, I don't have the feeling that there are even useful laboratory setups of the presented kinds of photonic devices. It rather looks like promising basic research.
As for the all photonics claim, I think the notion should be scaled down a little to be less prone to misunderstanding. To many people, it sounds like all photons, no electrons. I don't believe there is such a thing within our technological reach. Photons are bosons and interact extremelyweakly. That's not a very good basis for a computing device. Fortunately, photons can be converted into excited states of electrons which are fermions, interact in many ways, and can be used to produce logic gates.
That leaves us with a possible extension of the present use of photonic devices from lines of communication between nodes on a network to nano-lines of communication between old-fashioned electronic gates. And that's certainly not going to happen very soon. So, sorry my friends, no reason to get all excited.
Breaking the bonds of ignorance (Score:3)
electron drift: in average high conducting wire and given a good sized (120v) voltage, this speed is roughly 1m/10min. Not exactly something to transfer data with eh?
EM pulse speed in a wire: 2.997 * 10^8 m/s > EMPS > 2.997 * 10^7 m/s. The frequency can be changed quite easily and quickly
Photon speed: Depends on the medum, but 2.997*10^8 >= PS > 2.997 * 10^7 m/s (note this low is an estimate, it might go down to 10^6, but definetly not lower. The frequency of group of photons can change much easier and quicker than that of a EMPS caused by a series of electrons lollygagging in a wire.
This oscillation is what gives them the data transfer speed. This isn't quantum physics, it is taught in the second course of intro physics (not conceptual, but actual) in colleg. Also known as the first E&M course
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:3)
So, the term "cool computer" will probably take a whole new meaning I guess.
However, I am no that excited on the subject. For one thing, I certainly do not posess such knowledge to question their theories.
What worries me, though, is that I kind of expect to be quite a few years before we could get our hands on one of those thingies. Think of the economics.
Suppose that in a month's time Mr. Ozin somes out and says "I've got a processor ready, architecture, ISA, layout, blueprints, the whole lot. Along with exquisite details on the manufacturing process!" (ok, it's not his job to design the processor, but let's say that somehow he got one ready from some processor designer at his uni)
For one thing, all the major corps will jump on it immediately (IBM for example). But the manufacturing process will be a new one and it's gonna be bloody expensive to make them and not the most efficient.
Another reason they're gonna be *really* expensive, even if the manufacturing process is just 5% more expensive than current practices: the corps so far have spent billions on investments in both product development and the respective manufacturing infrastructures. And they will want to milk that cow first on us and THEN, in a few years' time, introduce the optical chips as the high-prestige ones with equivalent prices...
No need to rush. Even a company rushing to beat the competition (take AMD for example, my favourite) will be held back a bit. No manufacturer is gonna make such big jumps.
A bit off-topic, but think about it. I wouldn't expect this technology to become mainstream anytime soon (btw, does the word "military" ring a bell??? I'm sure they'll want it first)
Trian
Photonics.. (Score:3)
in the article. I'm still trying to figure out
what is so novel about this. There has been an
aweful lot of work done for years now on trapping and guiding light. The big issue is efficiency.
The most promising technology I have seen for
photonic computing is guiding along defects of a photonic band-gap in a photonic crystal. This is
lossless guiding!!! Thats right, no photons can
escape! This research is lead by Joannopoulos at MIT http://ab-initio.mit.edu/photons Pretty
interesting possibilities since a photonic crystal
restricts photons of a given wavelength range from
propagating throught the material. A defect in
the 'crystal' allows the forbidden light to be
guided along the defect without leaking into the
bulk. Light can even be guided around right
angles without loss.
So we have the pipes, now we need the light
equivolent of transisters. But thats coming.
Jeremy
Where do we go from here? (Score:1)
''Clearly, every major corporation in the world is looking at this,'' Ozin said. ''The question is, where do we go from here?''
GPL.
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:2)
'Light of Other Days' / slow glass (Score:2)
We need a review by one of their peers (Score:4)
Oooh, I'm impressed. Slashdot already has links to the homepages of the two main subjects of the story of interest. Within which details of what is likely being talked of in the Toronto Star article can be found. I wish I had noticed that before I did all that searching.
Anyways, you'll notice that the publications start back in the early 90's. The 'new' thing they've discovered together might be what is talked about here [utoronto.ca], and is more clearly described here [utoronto.ca] and here [photonicstechnology.com] (Sajeev John's page contained links to this stuff...).
It's just a new way of making something that's been researched for the past 10 years [earthlink.net], photonic band [nec.com] gap materials [univ-montp2.fr].
I haven't seen anything yet to tell us if this is such a better way of making this class of material that it counts as a 'revolution'. We have to find someone who knows a lot more about the current state of the art in creating photonic band gap materials and get this person to analyze this new method and it's results, to tell us if it's a significant advance, or what it's advantages are.
AKA: More peer review please.
...by Bob Shaw (nt) (Score:1)
Not speed, but space. (Score:3)
With current chip technology, people have estimated all sorts of physical limits to how small we can make chips because of interference and such. Two wires (or etched copper or whatever) have to be physically seperated - but you can have two beams of light cross at a point and it wouldn't affect either "wire." In fact, it would seem that you could have two photon channels in completely oposity directions, but sharing the same space, and it would still be alright.
The advantage would come from being able to make insanely small chips, or chips the size we have now with a LOT more stuff on 'em.
--Me
I have a sig, and this statement is false.
Here's the scoop: I worked with Ozin (Score:2)
I haven't touched chemistry since I went into computer science (so I'm very rusty!), but I still remember the fundamentals of what he was trying to do.
Basically it works this way. You've heard of quantum confinement from your physics class, right?
If you choose your materials appropriately, you can quantum confine line in 1 dimension. These "quantum sheets" are often used to generate microlasers. You can also quantum confine light in 2 dimensions, you get "quantum wires" -- I can't remember if these had any use. Finally, if you quantum confine things in three dimensions, you get a "quantum dot". Essentially, a quantum dot has the same properties of an atom, but since it's made of designer materials, we can change their properties. This is what Ozin's work deals with.
So what does a quantum dot buy you? Nothing by itself. You need an infrastructure. That's where the zeolite comes into play. The zeolite has a nice regular matrix structure with holes of identical size. If you fill the holes of this structure with the appropriate semiconductor you have a quantum dot matrix.
Here's where it gets exciting. Due to quantum confinement, the quantum dot matrix absorbs light
until it reaches the energy level of one of the discrete quantum frequencies of zeolite cavity. At that point, all the dots release photons of pricely the same frequency. If you continue to add higher frequency photons, the quantum dot matrix will absorb it until the next quantum frequency. We've turned continuous spectrum into discrete light in a very controlled way.
So what are the uses? Optical switches, filters, and amplifiers are the obvious uses. It's also able to turn the continuous spectrum into a discrete spectrum. The material in the matrix is very flexible so you can adjust it to your needs. You can even dope some or all of the matrix elements or even create a matrix of mixed elements if you're looking for other properties.
Anyway, you get the idea.
I have only one question: (Score:2)
-------------------------------------------------
I know what you're thinking, but this is NOT a troll, it is a legitamit question, and I don't think that people quite realize how much of a breakthrough mirochip-toilet technology can be.
Just imagine the possibilities:
You'll have to use your hands to flush ever again! The whole defecation process will be completely automated. All you'll have to do is sit and squeeze, your toilet will do the rest for you.
Imagine a toilet that talks to you AS your feces drop into it. Well with recent AI and microchip advances (such as this one) you can!
Toilet: Looks like your having some trouble there, bob, would you like some jet-streams?
Bob: THANKS! TOILET! That would be great!!!
Another implementation of smart-toilet technology would be a medical one. Your toilet would examen your stool for toxins and other abnormalities, and catch potentially diseases before it's too late!
And lastly you'll never have to stop playing Quake when nature calls , EVER AGAIN! Because your smart-toilet will have a built in keyboard and monitor, you can finnally play quake AND defecate AT THE SAME TIME!!
Isn't technology wonderful?
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Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
UW and USC developed this two months ago? (Score:1)
Optical microchips promise speedy communications.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 United Press International
WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI)
Scientists at the University of Washington and University of Southern California have developed an experimental optical microchip that can run up to 10 times faster than the speediest electronic devices today.
They say the higher speed and capacity of the new devices could potentially revolutionize telecommunications, data processing, sensing and display technologies. An article on the device appears in the April 7 issue of Science.
The devices, called polymeric electro-optic modulators or "opto-chips, " translate electrical signals such as those used by televisions, computers, telephones and radar, into optical or light signals at rates up to 100 billion bytes per second, or 100 gigabytes.
Although the devices are microscopic in size, they can achieve information-processing speeds up to 10 times faster than current electronic devices, and have a greater bandwidth to transmit more information more quickly. The devices also require a fraction of a volt of electricity to operate, or less than one-sixth the electricity needed by today's electro-optic crystals.
The new modulators bridge the current world of electronics and the coming world of much faster, optical devices by translating electrical signals from a computer or other electronic device into optical signals for speedier information transmission. At the receiving end of the transmission, another modulator will turn the optical signal into an electrical signal for use by a computer or other electronic device.
"Optoelectronics will be the technology of the 21st century, just like electronics was the technology of the 20th century," Larry Dalton, a professor of chemistry at both the University of Washington and the University of Southern California, and co-author of the Science paper, told United Press International.
Dalton added that he doesn't expect optical-only devices to be in wide use any time soon. But there will be a move to hybrid optical and electronic, or optoelectronic, devices that will prevail for a long time. The new modulator, he said, can be used with today's electronic devices, so it is not necessary to spend a lot of time reengineering them.
Dalton said the real breakthrough was in creating a new material that doesn't impede the speed of light transmissions at the frequencies required for high-speed communications. Dalton and his colleagues changed the shape of organic molecules called chromophores to decrease electrical field noise. The chromophores were embedded into a polymer matrix to form the modulator.
Other researchers have previously tried to exploit the speed chromophores allow, but they ran into problems controlling the interactions between the electrical fields of the chromophores that sapped their efficiency. Dalton said he changed the shape of the chromophores from elliptical to cylindrical so there was less interference.
"This is the highest speed demonstrated today," said Ray Chen, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Microelectronics Research Center. Chen expects the technology to find its way into military, security and business applications within five years.
He added, "In this millennium, from 2000 to 2020, the engine driving the economy will be optical technology. Dalton's work provides a good vehicle to approach fast optical speeds."
Heat, electron speed, etc (Score:3)
I just wanted to address a couple of issues that seem to come up repeatedly (and sometimes incorrectly).
Heat: It's not obvious that optical computers would not have the heating problems the electon-based ones have. Sure, it wouldn't be based on the same mechanism (resistance), but you still have the problem of absorption. The same process by which the sun heats up your car in the afternoon would be a problem here.
Any time you shine light through something, some of it is transmitted, some is scattered and some is absorbed. The last two will cause signal losses and absorption will cause heating.
Heating may not be the biggest hurdle, but it will still be an issue.
Electron vs Photon speed: As a number of people have pointed out, wires to not carry signal at the speed of the electrons. A good (medium level) analogy to understand this is marbles in a plastic tube.
Let's say I have 100ft of plastic tubing full of marbles. We decide that every second, I'm gonna push a marble in my end (1) or I'm not (0). That's a 1bps data rate. Now, the speed at which the data travels is 100ft devided by the time between when I push on a marble and when one falls out the other end. Obviously, that's gonna be pretty fast.
The point is that the bit gets from one end of the tube very quickly even though any given marble will take a long time to get from one end to the other. Similarly, the electrons can carry information faster than they actually move.
(Disclaimer: This analogy is correct only in the sense of this last paragraph. I am not claiming otherwise)
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
additional problem: On a computer chip the
transfer of information is slowed down further
by the line capacitance and line resistance.
The capacitance is proportional to the distance
of the wires to each other and to the length of
the wires. The resistance is inversely
proportional to the width of the wire.
The time constant is determined by R*C. So
all three factors slow down signal propagation
as you move to smaller geometries/higher density
on the chip.
As for transistors - they can switch pretty fast
anyway - the delay is practically all routing.
The trick of course is to achieve high
integration - you need to be able to manufacture
highly integrated optic.
Interesting yes, but I believe it when I see it.
(Fair enough considering that it's optic.
Re:Not speed, but space. (Score:1)
A typical Compton wavelength for an electron is _much_ shorter than the comparable Compton wavelength of a photon.
This is why electron microscopes are used for incredibly resolving incredibly fine features (and not optical microscopes). Resolution liminiting wave effects creep up at much higher resolutions when using an electron microscope.
In order to get a photon whose wavelength is comparable to the typical Compton wavelengths of an electron, you are talking high energy photons (X-rays ).
In an all optical microchip, the photons would be piped around the chip in dielectric waveguides (essentially optical fibers). The cross sectional sizes of the dielectric waveguide are to be on the order of the wavelength of photon being transported (esp. if you want/need single mode transmission).
To pack these optical equivalents of wires with the same density as you would expect to find on a modern electron based processor, the wavelength of these photons would be well outside the optical spectrum.
However, if you don't believe me, calculate the energy / frequency for a photon whose wavelength is much smaller than feature sizes on modern microchips. (Hint: modern etching processes use deep ultraviolet light).
All optical microchips do have quite a few benefits. Compactness is not one of them.
Kevin
P.S. Before anyone objects on the grounds that you can just use higher energy photons, X-rays and deep ultraviolet light are very difficult to generate and control (esp. in a semiconductor medium). As such they are completely unsuitable for use in an optical microchip.
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Your thinking too two dementionaly. You have to take into account speed and bandwidth (not the same thing). (God...I feel like I'm back in the days of explaining to a client why a P66 is faster then a 486DX2-66) ;)
Think of it this way. I have two water pipes both with the exact same amount of pressure moving the water inside them (speed), but the difference is one pipe is and inch wide and one is a foot wide (bandwidth) now at the same pressure (speed) which do you think is going to move more volume of water (data)?
Although in this case the difference is many orders of magnitude more pronounced so perhaps an example of a pipe one inch wide versus one mile wide would have been more in order. Remember, photons can not interact with anything exept themselves, so it is possable to run multiple data streams in the same physical space. A piece of fiber the thickness of a hair can have several hundred signals on different wavelengths all riding in the same physical space at the same time with zero crosstalk and zero signal loss.
Thats not even touching on the fact that the usable freqencies withing a stream of light contain much more usable freqency then in an electronic medium where your range is constrained by EMI problems and signal loss over distance
So now we have an increased usable frequency range and the ability to run multiple signals over the same stream with no EMI conserns. This results in optical technologies being several orders of magnitude faster then equivalent electronic technologies. To be honest I can't quite figure out why this thread is even taking place. I mean, come on, you all except without question that fiber provides a fatter, faster pipe then CAT5, so why is this such a strange new consept that requires debate
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Re:We need a review by one of their peers (Score:2)
The second link you provide does reveal why this is a breakthrough.
Up until now, a lot of people have made photonic crystals, which allow precise control over the propagation of light, but this is the first report (to my knowledge) of a photonic crystal which can be modulated, as they say by applying an external field. This is key to fabricating dynamic structures (i.e., circuits) as opposed to static structures (i.e., simple block of semiconductor). Of course, there may be numerous difficulties to overcome before this technique can actually do some processing, and it may be superseded by some future discovery, but it is a very important advance in this field.
The fact that they published in Physical Review Letters is also an indication of the importance, to a broad audience, of this discovery.
gd
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Electrons do not travel anywhere close to the speed of light in a material medium.
In electron positron colliders maybe, but not in a microchip.
It has already been posted here that the drift velocity of an electron in a solid state medium is quite slow (really really slow).
Also, the interaction of a photon with matter (and a photon traveling in a material medium) can be influenced by static electric fields (ferro-electric materials), magnetic fields (ferro-magnetic materials) and numerous other effects (non-linear photon iteractions).
Kevin
Amen (Score:1)
Electron mass doesn't matter (Score:1)
--
Patrick Doyle
Re:Not speed, but space. (Score:1)
Compare the size of the original prototype of the various transistor structures with the size of a typical photonic switch setup today.
Another comparison that should help is that between the crystal structure of silicon and the structure of a photonic bandgap crystal. The latter is several orders of magnitude bigger in terms of the unit cell size and is very much composed of a material with an ordinary crystalline structure, making use of gazillions of the crystal unit cells to create one photonic-crystal unit cell.
Hence, size of photonic bandgap devices is not going to be much smaller UNLESS the researchers figure out a way to make them fully 3-D (silicon electronics is 2-D or "planar").
rs
Optical Microchip? (Score:1)
Now that we have the what,what about the how? (Score:3)
This article was pretty sparse on technical details...all it said that there was some kind of silicon material coating microscopic bubbles in opals. So is the way that they store a piece of information by trapping the little photons in the bubbles, where they bounce around a few hundred trillion times, until they are allowed to go free?
I feel sorry for those poor photons, trapped in their little opal bubble cages.
On the other hand, if they ever built a server out of these...we could /. it. We haven't slashdotted a precious stone yet.
Re:Overclocking Joy (Score:1)
Well...
Something went wrong.
Yay nature. (Score:1)
If this technique does become feasible for processing, does anyone have any idea what theoretical limits there might be to speed of processing? First generation devices are probably likely to be little better (if any) that existing silicon-based ones, but then silicon is quite mature tech, nowadays.
but everybody knows... (Score:1)
Re:Optical Microchip? (Score:1)
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:4)
Also, since photons do not posses charge, they can not be interfered with by any kind of static electricity, magnetic fields, etc. Their signal stays truer.
Re:Now that we have the what,what about the how? (Score:1)
I propose :
SETS . Slashdotters for the Ethical Treament of Silicon.
Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Ibag
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
This is gonna be really revelutionary.
Patrick
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:2)
Re:Now that we have the what,what about the how? (Score:1)
They have feelings too. It's not right to farm them. We must set them free,
Actually it does bring new meaning to the whole pet rock thing of the mid 70's.
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Electrons travel at the speed of light.
The speed of a system should not depend on which of these are used.Is there something I am missing?
Are there intricicies to the matter which make opticle better?
Would one method produce less heat than the other?
Or is it all hype because its just something new that people can have optimism about?
If children can ask, then so can I:
Re:Now that we have the what,what about the how? (Score:1)
I'm all for a few keg parties to rais funds
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:2)
In an electronic device, electrons travel at ~10 m/s, nowhere near the speed of light. Signals travel in an electronic device as electromagnetic waves, which are the same as light.
The actual advantage of optical devices is that the wavelength of the signal carriers is smaller, so faster switching is possible, if you can work out how to do it, and there's no problem with interference from external fields.
Re:Why is optical even that great? (Score:1)