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Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals
KeelSpawn sent in a short article talking about creating the equivalent of etched silicon for light, using a method intended to be cheap enough for commercial applications.
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How 'about this instead!
Although this is obviously aimed at more "business-productive" markets, I'd be interested to see how (or if) this technology affects the entertainment industry. Just yesterday, on the star wars topic, we saw lots of good banter about DLP, which is made up of millions of minature mirrors. I wonder if technology like this could take the mechanics out of something like DLP. Or perhaps, on a further refinement, this technology could supercede the entire concept of things like galvanometers in things like laser shows.
The major obstacle here seems to be cost, but what if making the waveguides so small wasnt the challenge?
This too shall pass.
Wave guides that small are useless, you need big wave guides to improve the experiance of surfing the net.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I thought they had something of a chance about ten to fifteen years ago when I saw an episode of Beyond 2000.. They discussed a method of changing the color of a transparent polymer at the molecular level via laser--in three dimensions. This soooo would be an improvement over CDs. And what's with the spinning!? Solid state needs to be the ultimate goal.
Looks like it's finally three years down the road--according to the article, anyway.. I saw it will be at least five years. Manufacturers are just now getting to the point of making DVD-writing standardized and afforadable.. Sony asks, "Why on Earth would we want something new?"
I just hope the ad guys don't make a mistake and try to substitute photonic crystals for my coffee!
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Sad I missed that on the Star Wars thread, as I have a DLP projector for my home theater system and therefore some hands-on experience from them. Anyway, what can be said about them is;
- less color saturation than LCD projection (colors are not as vivid)
- no burn-in (as opposed to LCD)
- better longevity of colors (no fade over time)
- MUCH better brightness, in fact, black becomes dark-grayish (this is a problem)
- bulbs cost you an arm and a leg
- less need for cooling => less noise
- crispness is so good you have to deliberately DE-focus to get a good movie viewing experience
Everything of course from my own personal experience with them. I could recommend a DLP projector to anyone who wants to set up a home system.
The article does say that the current process is based on a laser etching in a polymer, but Paul Braun also suggests that the ultimate goal of usefulness will would probably be made of a material "such as silicon" that transmit light more reliably.
I fail to see a huge advantage in a photonics circuit based on this technology. Braun has perhaps developed a new method that could replace the complex multistep photochemical etching process of todays microprocessors. But it would appear to be harder to scale for production if the laser has to draw the circuit (or the inverse of the circuit) on the chip. Its like the difference between stamping a CD & burning a CDR. Stamping scales for production, and burning one at a time does not. Could be a real innovation for small-run custom circuits, but that does not seem to be where the money is.
The article really didn't mention any specific applications of the technology. I assume this would be aimed toward optical processors, but does anyone know any links to more information on that kind of application?
Unless an invention comes from IBM I just assume it is vaporware or that it won't be invented until some company with a lot of capital comes in and buys it. Now if MS buys the technology to make 10+ ghz chips and then bundles them together with their software then we are in trouble. With a proprietary CPU 5 times faster even XP will run faster then the leanest self compiled Linux kernel.
It should be noted that photonic crystals are not actually as strong as what one might think. By keeping the material in a frozen state, the item becomes increasingly more fragile and diminnishes it's ability to reflect sound waves - HOWEVER, Just the oppostite will occur when heating up to over 50'C - The item will then start to amplify that original sound. Quite amazing isn't it?!
jESUS the Monkey
err.. read the article again mate.. He's talking about the competing techniques when he says that.
B.
Now if MS buys the technology to make 10+ ghz chips and then bundles them together with their software then we are in trouble.
But we all know that Microsoft is the DARK SIDE. They can't use anything connected with the LIGHT.
:)
If you can replace the cpu with an optical chip clocking at the same speed or faster, you would avoid issues like heat, because the photons don't encounter things like electrical resistance. So you don't need a fan now. And you probably could seriously boost the clock speed. The better this manufacturing process gets, the closer you get to a machine you don't hear. No fans and flash memory sounds like a wearable computer as strong as a pc. And the price is dropping.
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
This article is the standard babble one sees from Professors trying to drum up research grants for research that will eventually lead to a very nice way to manufacture something... but ends up never being used because the technology is superceded by something created in the industry at lower cost and better performance. Scanning a laser across a 12 inch wafer will never be cheaper than doing it by lithography.
You need good old electron waves, would i make light of such an important subject?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Eventually, I figured out that the bubbles don't have to be a discrete substance. It should be possible to use changes in density in the substrate as if they were bubbles. The changes in density would be produced by interference waves, sort of a dynamic hologram. Indeed, my optical computer would ideally have been an analog computer based on dynamic holograms.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Doesn't anyone realize how important this will be for the future of the internet?! (or whatever augments/replaces it)
Petabit workgroup switches for your LAN...
Exabit (or beyond)aggregate switches/routers for backbone...
The implications for computing are even better~
All optical CPUs with optical interconnects means no more heat/size trade offs for portable devices and no more "jet thrust" air conditioning for the server farms.
This means you can increase the server density (how many processor blades you can stuff into a 7 foot cabinet)
(oh, and cheaper Co-Location spaces for broadband startups (like Covad..whoever) because they will only need a fraction of the floor space for their gear!)
All in all, this IS effieciency!
Low power consumption (and very little waste heat), nearly unlimited performance....
Ok, i need to go change my pants now...
ta ta~
so when does Kal-el file for patent infringement.
When this is done, will I be able to take a green glowing crystal, throw it at an ice field, and have a huge building grow?
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Please, I just had an exam on this stuff and it raped my brain! Please have pity of me as I have nightmares of forward and reverse propagating solutions capturing and grilling me on the dielectrig grating of a DFB.
I need a break,
Edo
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Since I actually do research in this area and there is some confusion here, let me give a very brief introduction to photonic crystals (which can be studied using free software).
Photonic crystals are periodically-structured optical media that, with the right structure, completely forbid the propagation of light in a certain range of wavelengths (analogous to electronic band gaps). They form a sort of "optical insulator" that you can use to trap, guide, and control light. The work at essentially any wavelength (in contrast to metallic waveguides) provided that you can fabricate a periodic structure with periodicity on the order of half a wavelength, and have a number of potential applications, including:
1d photonic crystals (multilayer films) have been known since Rayleigh in 1887 (although there are new twists) but 2d and 3d crystals weren't conceived until 1987, via a marriage of solid-state physics and electromagnetism.
The paper Slashdot linked to is considering photonic-crystals made by self-assembly of microspheres into close-packed lattices. A perfect crystal has limited use; you need to make defects to carve devices out of it, and that is what they are doing here. (There are many problems of precision, etcetera, that still need to be overcome for practical integrated devices, I think.)
Note that one can also make photonic crystals with traditional lithography, but that poses its own set of challenges (especially for full 3d-periodic crystals).
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
I think the real advancement here is the possibility for quantum computing as soon as we learn to harness interference paterns. With this technology, creating pathways for coherent light to be channeled, combined, interfere, give and end result, and then be re-channeled recombined and so on ad infinitum... untill an end result is met. This allows for a computing cycle that is as short as t=C*L where L is the entire path length. The cycle would by necesity be slightly longer than that to allow the result to be recorded, but it need not be much longer. The only thing that is stoping us now is our lack of knowledge of photon interactions, and that is growing quickly. When this is finaly harnessed it will blow everything we could have dreamed of out of the water, then again it might take 100 years to work out the science and build the damn thing... but at the rate of advancement I doubt it.
I like replies better than Karma, even if they are flames, because that tells me I got someone thinking.
every few years comes some researcher and suggests asynchronous design and every time the industry ignores him.
the reason is simple : verification.
it is tough enough as it is to verify a synchronous design (exponentially hard, in fact.)
it takes about least 1/2 of development time. (actually more like 2/3 most of the time.)
adding to this the complexity of many time scales and asynchronous tasks and you very quickly reach something which cannot be verified.
moreover, the actual value of asynchrounicity in terms of performance cannot be predicted in advance , so what you're asking for is changing a complete industry to a much riskier method, with no quantitatively defined profit.
cool idea, impractical.
Working for necessity's mother.
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