Using Lasers to Speed Computer Data

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The start-up Lightfleet has developed an unusual way to use lasers to speed the flow of data inside a computer, hoping to break a bottleneck that can hamper machines using many microprocessors, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company plans to sell servers it predicts will be much more efficient than existing systems in tackling tough computing problems. Tasks could include automatically recognizing a face in a video image or sifting through billions of financial transactions for signs of illegal activity. These machines will attempt to sidestep some of the problems associated with parallel computation by ensuring all processors are connected, all the time."

Comments

hmm

[mastershake_phd]

Lightfleet is doing the opposite: using lenses to spread out laser beams and bounce the light off a mirror to send data around a system.

Sounds fragile, and expensive.

This solves what exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

What - besides making your server highly susceptible to dust - does this do that HT does not?

o_0

[ukatoton]

"You don't have traffic issues and messages colliding," said Jeffrey Hewitt, an analyst at the research firm Gartner Inc.

Does anyone have any idea how they can have an all-to-all system in which messages don't collide? How is this faster than an electron based system?

Also, isn't dust in the circuits going to be much more of a concern with light based chips?

Hate to be a negative nancy

[bperkins]

I'm a bit surprised the Wall Street Journal would more or less paraphrase a vacuous press release and pass it off as an article.

I'm less surprised (but still surprised) that slashdot would pick up such a piece.

My suggestion for a tag:
pressreleaseaseasjournalism