Slashdot Mirror
Paint-on Laser Brings Optical Computing Closer
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist has a story about a laser made by painting a solution of semiconductor crystals onto glass. It could be used to break the interconnect barrier by having optical interconnects, the interconnect barrier threatens Moore's law unless a faster way of connecting chips is found."
Also, electricity suffers resistance when it travels through metal, creating HEAT and LOTS of it (I've heard its not uncommon for the latest P4's to operate around 70dec C under full load with stock cooler). Light on the other hand, travelling through optical cable or through air or vacuum, is offered no resistance (or so little that it barely generates any appreciable heat).
Room temperature processors anyone? This would be great for eliminating the wear and tear and thermal breakdown caused by heating/cooling when turning your comp on and off. I believe the speed difference between electricity and light (while it may be significant through specific mediums) would be negligible? We're talking distances of micrometers, and 2 or 3 cm at worst (think of the size of a processor die).
Chums up, let's do this!
Well, I don't have any direct sources, but: The interconnect barrier means that while chip size keeps decreasing, the interconnects between sections of chips, and even between individual chips themselves aren't able to be made much smaller, so things like resistance, capacitance, and inductance get in the way with the bigger interconnects. Basically, the interconnects can't keep up with the growth of the chips themselves.
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
yep it's simple really.
take your standard Network. Incoming ISP network, Local Router, cables, computers.
Now take a Fiber optic version of that. Fiber from ISP, to Interconnect, to router, cables and computers. Sometimes they can even make the lines to the machines fiber as well but not always.
Basically in order to have fiber optics everytime you hit a junction you have to convert the signal to electrical, sort it, and then convert it back to light. That process slows down the overall data transfer rate considerably.
What they are trying to do is make it so that you can plug the fiber right into your computer and have the signal remain as light the entire distance it travels. This will increase bandwidth and speed of the networks signifcantly just be replacing routers.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades."
It has to do with transistors.. not the speed of processors.
Whoa, your modders are on crack. Your answer is totally offtopic.
Electrons are practically bystanders in the propagation of a signal down a transmission line. The signal itself is an electromagnetic wave different only in wavelength and frequency from any other electromagnetic wave, including light. They play a crucial role at the ends, but in the middle they just slow things down.
[i]the interconnect barrier threatens Moore's law[/i]
Terribly sorry to rain on your parade, but the fact that we live in a 3D world with a speedlimit limits computing speed eventually.
Electrical signals in wires travel (according to rough measurements I did about two decades ago) at about 0.3c (a third of the lightspeed). Light travels at 0.6c (in glass).
So you win about a factor of two by moving to light, provided you use fibreglass to channel the communications to the right place.
If you Aim lasers through normal air, you can win a factor of three. Wow. That might extend Moore another 2 years, but it does not solve the fact that physics limits Moore eventually.
In theory, "computing nodes" can be connected using for example hypercubes. 4 nodes form a square with max communications distance of 2, 8 nodes form a cube, with max distance of 3. And so on.
Wether these "computing nodes" are complete computers, elements of a parallel system, or just elements of a CPU, doesn't matter.
As the dimension of the hypercube increases, the physical placement of the nodes in 3D-space means that the communications links between the nodes starts to increase. The Lightspeed limits theoretical computation speed to what you might expect of a 3D structure.
Off topic, but had to be asked.
You know, your post was good until you ruined it at the end. I have always wondered, but never bothered to ask until now (irritation level reached its limit?)... What the HELL is the obsession with "first post"? Does it make your dick grow longer if you get it or something? A real, tangible benefit?