Optical Computers with Starfish Components?

David M. Sweeney writes: "Salon has posted a news item that states, "Rows of tiny crystals that armor the skeleton of a certain kind of starfish act as an array of microscopic lenses that would be difficult for even the best engineer to duplicate, researchers say." These lenses have a number of possible applications in computing and telecom. Wonder what PETA will have to say when Intel opens its first starfish farm..."

Comments

Very nice, but what about switching?

[adoll]

The article talks about the starfish's use of microscopic lenses that are beyond human's present ability to manufacture. That is great, but the key problem with optical computing is the multiplexor/demultiplexor switching issue. These lenses won't fix that. Here is a link to a SciAm story that highlights some of the things folks are working on for optical computing (near bottom of article).

Something these critters body parts may help with is: "One of the problems optical computers have faced is a lack of accuracy; for instance, these devices have practical limits of eight to 11 bits of accuracy in basic operations. "

But this still won't give us routing solutions for optical packets through multiplexors!

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Better article

[Strange Ranger]

At Bell Labs here.

"The calcite microlenses expertly compensate for birefringence and spherical aberration - physical effects common in lenses that distort light - and scientists hope to mimic nature's success and design microlenses based on the brittlestar model. Such biomimetic lenses may prove useful as components of optical networks, and in chip design, where they could potentially improve optical lithography techniques."