New Material Sets Stage For All-Optical Computing

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 4, 2010 @11:33PM from the good-ping-times dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the International Business Times: "Researchers have made a new material that can be used to guide waves of light, a breakthrough that could lead to ultra-fast computing. Georgia Tech scientists are using specially designed organic dyes that can process and redirect light without the need to be converted to electricity first. ... 'For this class of molecules, we can with a high degree of reliability predict where the molecules will have both large optical nonlinearities and low two-photon absorption,' said [Georgia Tech School of Chemistry professor Seth] Marder." According to the article, using an optical router could lead to transmission speeds as high as 2,000 gigabits per second, five times faster than current technology.

4 of 53 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Yeah ... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-03-04 23:37 · Score: -1, Offtopic

Leading to faster "Frist Psot" messages !!
1. Re:Yeah ... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-03-04 23:42 · Score: -1, Offtopic
  
  Zing!
2. Re:Yeah ... by garg0yle · 2010-03-05 01:01 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  You mean "Bazinga!"
  
  --
  Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
The problem isn't backbone, it's the last mile by Jaydee23 · 2010-03-05 00:50 · Score: -1, Offtopic

There is lots of bandwidth around, the problem is getting it to people. Until the last mile problem is tackled in a more robust manner, teh backbone could have infinite speed and I'd hardly be able to tell the difference. (Northern Scotland Office 0.5Mbit/sec Home 4Mbit/sec)