Comments on: Laser Transistors Could Usher in Super-Fast “Photonic” Computers

By: Art

Art — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:36:58 +0000

@#7: I think he was referring to Fahrenheit, unless he lives somewhere near the lower crust. It’s hot, here, in Texas, but it isn’t quite boiling.

By: YayNettles

YayNettles — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:11:56 +0000

@#2: blimey, 100°C or more outside where you live? Now that is frickin’ boiling…

By: Naturalblond

Naturalblond — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:22:25 +0000

If cooling is to expensive cant they (when they’ve made one) put one of these photonic supercomputers in space our free freezer in the sky?

By: brotim

brotim — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:33:15 +0000

Hasn’t the HUP been disproved?

Interesting thought about combining light frequencies and amplitudes to add computational dimension to the process…

Depending upon the degree of differentiation, a single transistor could have nearly limitless simultaneous “switches” thrown.

Cool!!

By: Jumblepudding

Jumblepudding — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:55:04 +0000

If the computer is subject to the heisenburg uncertainty principle, then sci-fi logic would dictate that the computer would develop sentience. real logic would dictate it wouldn’t work very well.

By: YouRang

YouRang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:10:06 +0000

It would seem that photo devices would be more susceptible to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle since the momentum is so much smaller. So it would seem anything using a laser can’t be much smaller than 4000 Angstroms; whereas, a transistor could be only several atoms across.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:41:01 +0000

Where are all the trolls to decry your use of the word “frickin’” is a scientific milieu?

The most fricken awesome thing about light is the ability to be able to encode information in different frequencies/wavelengths (think of being able to listen to all the different instruments in an orchestra at the same time – it all comes through the same carrier, air molecules, but carries many different signals). So you might be able to multiplex data through this system at the buses using multi-wavelength laser encoding. So not only would the processing be fast, the connections would be smaller and faster! Fiber optic technology already has this ability (or so I’ve heard in the past), but it may not work at such small scales, or some weird quantum effects may be exhibited. Regardless, I look forward to the future of computing. Especially if it’s at -272 degrees, because my current computer is 100+ and where I live that’s also the daily outside temperature in the summer. Not fun!

By: Christina Viering

Christina Viering — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:40:00 +0000

Very complicated.