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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."
Electrons ARE light particles.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
My photons are faster than yours!
And who gets to use these? Are these like only special coprocessors for million-dollar supercomputers? Are they going to be x86-compatible? MIPS compatible? What?
It's high bandwidth (10Gbit/sec) small scale (130nm) modulation from CMOS to optical. This is not "processing" in the sense of optical logic.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
They'll just release the exact same chip as this guy in a year, only call it "Pentium 4 with photon extensions" and pretend they invented it.
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.
minus the omniture spyware tracking and massive banners
________
Startup Luxtera has announced its plans to enter the CMOS photonics market, anticipating the day when microprocessors will transmit information via light, not electrons.
The company claims that its optical modulator for transforming electrons into photons runs at 10-GHz, ten times the speed of an optical modulator Intel Corp. researchers began talking about last year. Beginning in mid-2006, Luxtera hopes to enter production of photonic devices using standard CMOS manufacturing processes. ADVERTISEMENT
Although the majority of chip-to-chip communications are conducted using copper-based interconnects, researchers are already looking toward the day when the balance shifts toward optical transmissions, initially for chip-to-chip interfaces between microprocessors, or between a microprocessor and memory device. Fibre optics are a standard component of modern telecommunication infrastructures, and interfaces such as Fibre Channel also use optical fibre interconnects to link up devices.
Although light slows down by some degree when transmitted through an optical medium, shifting to optical-based components is still too expensive than relying solely on copper, even when factoring in the additional power, heat, and crosstalk issues.
"The problem here that we can solve is a matter of bandwidth," said Gabriele Sartori, Luxtera's vice president of marketing and a former advocate for the HyperTransport protocol developed by Advanced Micro Devices.
Part of the relatively high cost of photonics comes from the fact that converting electrons to photons requires an intermediary device, such as the modulator Luxtera is designing. Today, that device exists as a separate module. Intel, Luxtera, and others are trying to integrate the optical waveguides within standard CMOS processes, that can be controlled by the standard voltage swings of a microprocessor.
However, doing so requires that the optical vendor have close ties to a microprocessor manufacturer. At Intel, that's no problem. Luxtera, on the other hand, has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop the technology. Finding a partner like Freescale is "necessary," Sartori said. "You must walk before you can run."
Freescale has taped out several engineering samples of the optical technology, including a chip, one side of which includes the optical interface built in. The sample chip use a 130-nm SOI process, the same technology used to fabricate the G4 microprocessor. Part of Luxtera's job has been to develop silicon libraries, the files used to design the photonic chips in the same way other libraries serve as the blueprint for making more conventional semiconductors.
The 32-employee startup originally received $7 million funding from Sevin Rosen Funds and August Capital in 2001, followed by an additional $15 million by New Enterprise Associates in 2003. Eli Yablonovitch, a professor at UCLA who developed photoelectronic crystals, sits on the company's board, while Arno Penzias, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on the Big Bang theory, serves in an advisory role. Other board members include Andy Rappaport of August Capital, which funded Transmeta, among others.
IBM is working in this area also . . .
Will be interesting to see a PowerPC with the guts of the VMX unit running at 10Ghz . . .
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0411/068.html
Interestingly, the 10Ghz figure comes from a measurement made a researcher at Sun Labs, who have been working with Luxtera for more than a year now. The article also talks about what other companies such as Intel and IBM are up to.
Just thought I'd clear up that potential confusion...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Actually this is less dissappointing that I originally thought --
A major problem as CMOS processes get smaller and smaller is wires and wiring. Its really bad at 90nm and it looks like its going to be way worse at 65nm.
Even if optical interconnects can just be used for long intra-unit busses (think L1 cache to fetch/decode unit, and there to integer unit and float unit, etc) we could see great performance gains.
Something like when the upper metal layers in CMOS went to copper a few years ago.
Other groups working on optical interconnects: (incomplete list)
Heriot Watt
Cornell University
IBM Zurich
Delft
UIUC
Intel
Stanford
At 10 GHz and an index of refraction of 1.5, each 2 centimeters of light pipe adds 1 clock cycle to the latency to the system (2 clock cycles to the round-trip). Put a optically-connected device a foot (30 cm) from the processor and you have 15 clock cycles of data (or a 30 clock cycle response time) just due to the fiber, let alone any in the devices at either end of the fiber-optic pipe.
Its always interesting to see what happens when the relative speeds of processor, memory, and interconnects change.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Now when I find a bug in my code I can just reconfigure the photonic matrix and reverse the polarity of the power coupling.
And if that doesn't work I'll try modulating the field harmonics.
This can really save me in a tight situation.
Robert
Bet this
"But in my mind, I'm wondering how registers are "storing" information. Light, to my knowledge, cannot be effectively stored."
That's not an issue here, from what I can tell. The 10 GHz number is modulating light to electrical signals. All the actual storage and processing will be done just as before; you still have your Flip Flops and storing the bits. The only difference here is that instead of copper interconnects, we use light pulses. The benefit of this new technology is that it can be done with normal CMOS fabrication techniques.
Anyone with more experience with this stuff is free to correct/clarify.
If you read the article carefully (which is laced with marketing hype and was obviously written by someone only passingly familiar with the technologies involved), you will see that nobody's promising optical cpu's in 2006. In anticipation of future optical chips and other technologies, Intel has begun developing one of the stepping stones toward this technological era, which is an optical/electrical gateway of sorts which can be built on a standard electrical chip to allow it to interface with optical components. Think a modern cpu, with some low level optical/eletrical interface on the edge of it so that a row of optical "pins" can stick out one side in addition to the normal electrical pins on the bottom.
This little startup company is working on the same thing, and hopes to have it out soon. Their marketing article is trying to build hype so they can get more cash. Nobody will be selling anyone an all-optical cpu in 2006 (or 2007, or 2008, etc).
11*43+456^2
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.
It may take a few nanoseconds for the light to bounce around, but that light can be modulated at extremely high rates (that electrical wires cannot). Managing latency is a well understood problem, generally solved by using speculation, buffering, etc..
The fact is, if these parts are running at 10ghz, you will have 10ghz connections between connected parts (with a few nanoseconds of latency, which is mostly irrelevant).
Bandwidth is a measure of frequency and number of communication channels. This advancement does indeed provide more bandwidth, mostly because it can be clocked higher. All computer configurations could see substantial benefits because current electrical designs have highly limited bus speeds (it is not signal propagation that matters, but signal modulation speed "frequency").
Again, signal propagation speed is mostly irrelevant. Signal modulation speed is what is important. Latency != Frequency.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator