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Production of Photon Processors Expected in 2006
ThinSkin writes "Photon processors that transmit data via light, not electrons, are slated to enter production in mid-2006, ExtremeTech reports. Headed by a UCLA professor and a Nobel Prize winner, startup Luxtera claims that its optical modulator clocks in at 10-GHz, tens times that of Intel's optical modulator researchers talked about last year. Since the optical module exists as its own entity, it will require a standard CMOS processes to integrate the optical waveguides. Luxtera has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop this technology."
At first, I thought "Wow! That's like blazing fast speed!" And then I thought "Well, that sure beats having a couple PS3 cell processors hooked up together" And then i read the article... and was promptly disappointed. The 10GHz speed is how fast it can turn electrons into photons, but the chip is still primarily electron-based, so what is the real performance gain? They don't tell you because it probably isn't any yet.
IBM is working in this area also . . .
Will be interesting to see a PowerPC with the guts of the VMX unit running at 10Ghz . . .
Well, it is a multiplier, even if it's not the only factor...
:P
Of course, it just amazes me to think about. With a main clock cycle of 10 billion cycles per second, there would actually be fractional cycles going on at hundreds of billions of cycles per second. The number is staggering; a couple hundred billion times the width of the outer layer of your skin would reach to the moon. The photons will travel through hundreds of thousands of hand-designed gates at the tiniest of scales.
And, of course, the most common usage for this marvel of modern engineering will be to provide better lighting effects in video games.
I once listened to a Philip Glass record for an hour and a half before I realized it was skipping.
Anytime you're using light for any purpose-- say, to light a parking lot, or to communicate between links in a processor-- and the light is visible to anyone or anything not explicitly served by that purpose, that's bad. If you're lighting a parking lot, and your lights are visible to planes passing overhead, that's bad, because that means you're paying to light the night sky for no reason. Similarly the chip manufacturers are going to want to make sure the photons stay inside of the microchip; if any is visible outside of the microchip, that means the light is leaking. Every bit of leaking light is wasted power. It would be like if your car was driving down the road and dribbling oil behind it as it went. You don't want your car to waste oil like that. You don't want your computer to waste light and therefore electricity either.
Although the clock on your cpu may be 3 GHz, the speed that you can communicate with the memory and other hardware is considerably less. It is actually quite difficult to get really fast speeds going on a printed circuit board. (My students have been able to get data moving at 6 GHz on a pcb so I'm fully aware that it can be done.) Being able to communicate with the memory at optical speeds could make your computer orders of magnitude faster.
Remember that they are talking about serial communication however. To compare that to a 64 bit wide data bus, divide by 64. 10 GHz / 64 = 150 MHz, not that fast. So, you would need several modulators to actually see a speed improvement. If we look at this as a disruptive technology, it holds promise.
Maybe someone smarter than I can explain how it all works.
Okay, I am down with light based switching mechanisms and all that. But in my mind, I'm wondering how registers are "storing" information. Light, to my knowledge, cannot be effectively stored. I recall from a couple of years ago someone attempting to make progress in that area but I don't recall hearing that they were successful.
I guess it's time for me to go back to school on this new technology 'cause I *just* don't understand it. Anyone who does understand it care to spit out a few paragraphs to summarize how it works assuming the reader already understands the basics of digital electronics?
From the Article:
The company claims that its optical modulator for transforming electrons into photons runs at 10-GHz
I may not have a Nobel Prize, but I do have a Ph.D. in physics. Electrons do not tranform into photons. They may produce photons, but not turn into them.
I see these articles that claim the creation of optical processors. But read the article, and all the researchers have to do is add a silicon processor and BOOM, we have an optical processor. It's not that easy.
I remember the researcher who created an optical computer that was the size of a room. Why is this? Electrons are small. They bend around corners. They stay put. They move when you want them to. Photons do not bend well around small corners, do not support CMOS-like circuits and generally fail at most tasks of that versatile, tiny doer of great deeds, the electron.
As usual, it's just an optical modulator. Boring old modulator.
There doesn't seem to be anything technologically spectacular about Pixar movies these days. Toy Story was impressive. Finding Nemo was impressive. But Incredibles and Robots are generic 3D animation (with supposedly excellent stories, characters, etc.). Pixar is not a 3D graphics pioneer and the only thing Apple Xserves will do is drive the costs down (or up) a bit. Graphically it will all look the same.
I am much more impressed with Kaena, Immortel, Sky Captain, Advent Children and the like. Pixar is passe, it's just that most people haven't caught up with the fact.
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