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Researchers Building Computers That Run on Light
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in England are attempting to build a desktop computer that runs on light rather than electronics. A $1.6 million research project starting in June at the University of Bath is focused on developing attosecond technology, which refers to continuously emitting light pulses that last just a billion-billionth of a second."
Nothing to see here... Brilliant!
I can give you all the attosecond pulses of light you want -- as long as they're all ones.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
>So whats that a giga-gigahertz?
Exahertz, EHz.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
now all those case modders will have their lights built in!
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
That is England, Europe.
Modern photonics, if it works within a computer, will make it impossible to eavesdrop on a computer with a van-eck style of a attack. Granted, van eck phreaking a VGA cable may be doable (barely), and performing similar snoops on a motherboard may seem incredibly difficult even by today's standards, it is within the realm of possibility. Take a look at the field of acoustic cryptanalysis and its potential.
Now extend that into the electromagnetic spectrum, give yourself a very powerful broadband software defined radio and a good isolated faraday cage, and could it be possible to mount a similar attack electronically?
If photonics take over, we will for once be in a safe-zone of knowing once and for all that no overly powerful overseeing entity will be able to eavesdrop on any kind of electromagnetic emissions, so long as you don't have any light leaks.
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
No, they aren't! The article didn't mention desktop computers at all. As expected, this is basic research on photonics. The researchers are nowhere closer to build a desktop computer that run on light, than they are to build a desktop computer that runs on steam and valves. Whether it is the submitters or editors who are idiots is hard to tell, but my guess is that both of them would score pretty well on that scale! Maybe we should build desktop computers of them?
They're all wet. The University of Shower has already disproven most of this. Even the lesser known School of Sponge Bath has taken a "dim" view.
I know, I know. "Light"en up...
Stop me now before my Karma takes a Bath.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
What happens when we run out of light and have to look for alternative sources of lightergy?
"Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius." -Heinlein
I had not heard of this before. I guess I must have been in the dark.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Wouldn't a billion-billionth of a second be one second? I would have said billionth of a billionth if I didn't want to use an uncommonly large prefix.
A billion-billionths of a second = 1 second.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I didn't RTFA, but hey, this is slashdot, it wouldn't be the same if I did. It is great to see that people can process light without the use of electronics.
The all-optical transister is not imaginary.
A billion billionths of a second = 1 second.
A billion-billionths of a second = 1E-18 seconds.
Has anyone studied the possibilities of programming using bidirectional logic?
Feynman has. In his _Lectures on Computing_, he talks about the ramifications of bidirectional gates (reversible computing, but with a cost in complexity) in the context of entropy conservation. It's pretty interesting stuff.
But does it run Linux?
Or Quake?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
To be legitimately called attosecond pulse, it must be shorter 100 attoseconds (10^-16 seconds). That would mean that one would need > 10^16 Hz of bandwidth just to obey basic fourier analysis, giving us a center free space wavelength of 30nm. It is pretty hard to call such an electromagnetic wave 'light', seeing as it is so deep into the hard UV, it's almost an x-ray ( 10^16 Hz of bandwidth.
Light? In my IT dungeon?
Surely this is an act of war against pasty code monkeys.
Its the amazing technicolor cheese wedge!
Might such a computing system display any fun behavior if carried aboard a vessel approaching the speed of light?
It's really only the engineers. The rest of us (academics at least) prefer metric. Metric is now taught in the school systems, and all science classes expect students to use the metric, not the standard system. Engineers though don't move so fast, partly due to backwards compatability. Retooling every factory in the US is a problem, so they don't, but then everything is still in standard, so the new factories are in standard to... etc. etc. It's sort of like the internet switching over to IPv6. Because no-one can, or at least is willing, to say "on this day a giant switch will be flipped, and the world will change" the switch just doesn't happen at all.