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A Plasmonic Revolution for Computer Chips?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, we're using basically two ways to move data in our computers: transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size. Now, imagine a single technology combining the advantages of photonics and electronics. This Stanford University report says a new technology can do it: plasmonics. (For more about plasmons, read this Wikipedia article.) Theoretically, it is possible to design plasmonic components with the same materials used today by chipmakers, but with frequencies 100,000 times greater than the ones of current microprocessors. There is still a challenge to solve before getting plasmonic chips. Today, plasmons can only travel a few millimeters before dying, while today's chips are typically about a centimeter across. Read this overview for more details and references about plasmonics, and to discover why it's one possible future for chips' circuitry."
Lets keep it simple, put all of the Roland Piquepaille conspiracy posts here. :)
Editors: GIVE HIM HIS OWN DAMN SECTION SO CAN HIDE HIS POSTS
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Let us think of a computer processing unit as a juggler, and bytes as mangoes. Older CPUs would juggle one mango at a time, and frequently require modifications to the stage to boot. Around the 1980s, they could juggle two mangoes. Then four around 1990, and today as many as eight at a time! Now you would be expected to be quite impressed with each leap, notwithstanding the fact that you really wanted a juggler that could handle melons, grapefruit, or watermelon slices instead of (or in addition to) mangoes. In addition, the fact that you are juggling in a zoo where a primate is free to grab your fruit and substitute twigs (or worse!) mid-juggle owing to something called "stack smashing" in computer terminology is not supposed to discourage you.
There is a movement towards something called mutable paragraphs, where as in English "words" (groups of bytes) can be of different lengths depending on need. This may mean the ability to exactly fill out a data page for better efficiency, or to allow the CPU to work with communication protocols in their element (if a common network packet is 68 bytes long, a word should be ½NP or 34 bytes in the I/O buffer.) It also means that you use no more CPU space than you absolutely need to for a computational step, decreasing wear and tear on your components.
I guess what I'm getting at is that science fiction has nothing on practical interative design for real world technological improvement. Sure, we might get to the same place we read about 50 years ago, but not all in one step.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
But they might need to rephase the modulators and run in through some sort of tachion inverter feild.
Plasmonics does not sound like a perfectly cromulent word. Are you sure that the authors haven't embiggened the word a bit a bit? I mean, it's not unpossible...
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Today, plasmons can only travel a few millimeters before dying, while today's chips are typically about a centimeter across.
Well, in that case, it sounds similar to my research. See, if you jump, you can fly. Now currently, I can only fly a foot or two. Of course, most people want to fly longer distances, but it's a start.
-Valiss
Claiming "100,000 times the frequency" is a little misleading. You're not talking about the processor running at terahertz speeds - simply put, you can't make things small enough to do that. Plasmonic signals, photonic signals, electronic signals - they all travel on the order of light speed. There really wouldn't be much point raising the clock frequency beyond the characteristic length of the processing unit (Pentium 4 designers understand this now - they had to put "drive" stages into the pipeline just to allow signals to propagate, and that deep pipeline lead to a very low IPC).
This would be useful for things like memory and processor interconnects, because you could shove gigantic amounts of data. Hence the reason that the article stresses their use as high-traffic freeways. I'm not sure I see the point in an all-plasmonic chip (unless they've got power advantages) because of size concerns.
6 articles were submitted in the last month, NONE were rejected. If there were any Rejected articles, they would be displayed under a "Recent Submissions" section.
Not true. You only see your own rejected submissions. Other people can only see your accepted submissions.
How much heat are these things going to generate though. Because you know E = hf, if you have 100,000 times the frequency, your going to need to throw in 100,000 times the energy!! Of course that is simplification of what is really happening with these kinds of chips and it is much more complicated then just 100,000 times the energy needed. But it seems like these things might make the Pentium IV seems like a fridge!
Power does usually scale with the frequency, but it also scales with the signal strength (number of carriers: intensity in a photonic case, ~voltage in an electronic case). If you can up the frequency by a factor of two and cut the voltage (for instance) by a factor of two, it's the same power usage.
Of course, using E = hf is completely wrong here - that's the energy of a photon, and in a completely photonic chip, wouldn't matter in the tiniest bit - because the photons are emitted at one point, and absorbed at another, so there's no net energy loss.
Most of the places where the frequency dependence comes in are energy losses - like the resistance of a wire. With light, there's very little energy loss (in a fiber, for instance), so the chip will run very, very cool.
I don't know about your computer, but my computer uses wires to move data and transistors to process said data. I don't see how one can compare transistors to fiber optic cables.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
As someone who posts using links to wikipedia occasionally, I must say that I object. When I'm looking for a source to explain what I'm talking about, I simply reference the best URL I can find. Very often, that is wikipedia. It doesn't really matter who hosts the data if I know it to be valid.
As someone who has done some research on surface plasmons, I find the wikipedia article on Plasmon to be accurate and useful, so I think it is a good reference. Not all wikipedia articles are so good, but then again I don't reference the bad ones.
On the other hand, you are pointing out that we shouldn't accept wikipedia articles just because wikipedia is cool and lots of people edited the article so it must be right. Yes, that's valid. However, as with *all* sources of information, whether it is a wiki or slashdot or an encyclopedia or the local news, the end-consumer MUST use his judgement to decide if the information is valid or BS. It is an illusion to think that traditional sources of information are error free. In all cases, the reader must simply use judgement and double-check if things seem wrong.
I havent read the article (this is slashdot after all) but the summary is terrible. (unless its the articles fault)
From the summary:
transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size.
Transistors are just switches in the digital world. Just like anything that would be modulating the optical carrier.
Fiber optic cables arent switches at all, or even active. You cant even compare them with transistors at all. Compare transistors maybe with an optical switch (which are ususally transistor actuated) or compare fiber optic cable with wires, but not transistors with FO cables.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Come on Roland, give us a break . . . you obviously don't understand what your writing about. Your analogies make no sense, your summarize is full of gross holes and you're trying to "sex-up" plasmons by calling a natural phonomena a technology and saying that it's something "new" when it is not. And seems you're doing this to attract hits to your blog so that you can sell ad space.
I know this post is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that you are attempting to exploit the /. community for your own personal financial gain. We /. readers aren't as gullible or stupid as you seem to think . . .
Additionally, Roland's writing style is terrible and his command of the technology that he writes about is lackluster at best. Consider:
He compares connectors (optical fiber) to gates (transistors) and implies that they have the same function. He leaves out key points from the article (like the issue of heat is a complete unknown in the world of plamon based chips ). His summaries are blantant rip offs of the articles where he merely combines two ideas into one sentence or vice versa, giving no editorial content of his own . . . it is all editorial content from the article that he links. I can only assume that he is simply unqualified to give free thought and personal editorial content to the material that he submits.
He is not a journalist . . . he is a poor writer that steals editorial ideas and implies that they might be his own. He peppers these ideas with his own analogies that make little to no sense.
I honestly think that he's trying to launch a career as a blogger/technology writer, but I honestly think that he should consider broadening his knowledge of technology and taking some writing courses first.