6 ms·

Optical Computer Prototype

50 points by fenrissan 11y ago

sounds 11y ago
I think the submission here on HN has overdone it on the title. It doesn't compute "flops" like a traditional computer. The relevant text from the article: "The prototype achieves a processing speed equivalent to 320 Gflops and it is incredibly energy efficient as it uses low-powered, cost effective components." I am as interested as anybody in switching out for photons instead of electrons/holes. But please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
- dang 11y ago
  Ok, we took "32O Gflop" out of the title. If anyone suggests a better title we can change it again.
programmer_dude 11y ago
Isn't 320 GFLOPs kinda slow? An NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z can crank out 8122 SP GFLOPs for comparison.
- baobabaobab 11y ago
  That's the proof of concept prototype. If they achieve their stated targets, it would be a leap in computing capability. http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve-waiting/ http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve... "The analysis unit works in tandem with a traditional supercomputer. Initial models will start at 1.32 petaflops and will ramp up to 300 petaflops by 2020. The Optalysys Optical Solver Supercomputer will initially offer 9 petaflops of compute power, increasing to 17.1 exaflops by 2020."
- mcnamaratw 11y ago
  Apparently hype has the right of way on this post.
mentos 11y ago
If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?
- programmer_dude 11y ago
  >If photons and electrons travel at the same speed "If" - they do not! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_mobility Quoting from the above source... >Typical electron mobility for Si at room temperature (300 K) is 1400 cm2/ (V·s) and the hole mobility is around 450 cm2/ (V·s).[2] However this is besides the point since electric fields in a conductor do move at the speed of light.
- pronoiac 11y ago
  The article refers to lower power requirements. One of the problems of higher clock rates is heat dissipation; if this runs a lot cooler, then it might be able to clock much higher.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Electrons have mass they can't move at the speed of light. Photons also have other nice properties such as wavelength which open a whole suit of possibilities e.g. like having a logic gate which can operate in different mods based on the wavelength and polarization of the light. While this is technically possible with electronics as well by setting a different voltage limit it's much more effective with photonic computing and doesn't not increase the complexity of your base components as much. The current designs for a photonic computer are also much more parallel most of them basically layers of LED's and detectors with a very fast LCD matrix which serves as a mask between them. if you have a 256x256 pixel screen you can perform an operation on 65536 bits in a single clock, if you stack them up you basically getting 1 order of magnitude with each layer this isn't something you could ever achieve with current solid state electronics.
  - mentos 11y ago
    What fraction of the speed of light are electrons moving at in the most advanced silicon chip we have? Trying to understand how much speed is left on the table for us to pick up in serial processing?
mechagodzilla 11y ago
This appears to basically be an analog optical computer - it inputs some 2D data using an LCD, puts it through a bunch of optical transforms, and then captures the output with a camera. This probably does have some kind of obscure use cases where it makes sense, but it's very hard to compete with modern silicon for raw compute using some kind of hybrid method - moving data in and out of the optical part is just painful compared to keeping it all digital/electrical. The main problem is that computers today aren't actually slow =)
- imaginenore 11y ago
  Today's computers are very slow. Try modeling something complex, let's say 1 billion water molecules interacting. Then realize that 1 billion molecules is orders of orders of magnitude far from modeling a cup of water.
  - jjoonathan 11y ago
    > 1 billion molecules is orders of orders of magnitude far Understatement. There are 50 trillion atoms in a cell, 50 trillion cells in a human body (give or take an order of magnitude or two for definitions and caveats). Furthermore, big swaths of chemistry/biochemistry are inherently quantum mechanical (classical mech + E&M doesn't explain why molecules snap into little geometric shapes, let alone how those shapes interact) which has god-awful asymptotic complexity on account of the "present state" of the system (wavefunction) being a probability for each possible configuration of the system rather than a description of a single configuration. A purpose-built silicon supercomputer will struggle to simulate a single small protein using classical-mechanics approximations for a millisecond (and there are millions of those per cell and trillions of cells per body). There's a lot of room for improvement.
    - mechagodzilla 11y ago
      Right, but they didn't build an optical computer that is even close to competitive with something like this:http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc26/HC26-11-day1-epub/HC26.11-1-High-Performance-epub/HC26.11.130-Anton-2-Butts-Shaw-Shaw-Res-Search.pdf http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc26/...
mcnamaratw 11y ago
Oh no, not this stuff again.
reilly3000 11y ago
The better we understand EM radiation effects on all kinds of life the more important this technology will become.

50 points by fenrissan 11y ago

I think the submission here on HN has overdone it on the title. It doesn't compute "flops" like a traditional computer. The relevant text from the article: "The prototype achieves a processing speed equivalent to 320 Gflops and it is incredibly energy efficient as it uses low-powered, cost effective components." I am as interested as anybody in switching out for photons instead of electrons/holes. But please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

dang 11y ago
Ok, we took "32O Gflop" out of the title. If anyone suggests a better title we can change it again.

programmer_dude 11y ago

Isn't 320 GFLOPs kinda slow? An NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z can crank out 8122 SP GFLOPs for comparison.

baobabaobab 11y ago
That's the proof of concept prototype. If they achieve their stated targets, it would be a leap in computing capability. http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve-waiting/ http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/08/06/exascale-breakthrough-weve... "The analysis unit works in tandem with a traditional supercomputer. Initial models will start at 1.32 petaflops and will ramp up to 300 petaflops by 2020. The Optalysys Optical Solver Supercomputer will initially offer 9 petaflops of compute power, increasing to 17.1 exaflops by 2020."
mcnamaratw 11y ago
Apparently hype has the right of way on this post.

mentos 11y ago

If photons and electrons travel at the same speed am I right in thinking that the benefits of optical computing would be limited to parallel processing?

programmer_dude 11y ago
>If photons and electrons travel at the same speed "If" - they do not! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_mobility Quoting from the above source... >Typical electron mobility for Si at room temperature (300 K) is 1400 cm2/ (V·s) and the hole mobility is around 450 cm2/ (V·s).[2] However this is besides the point since electric fields in a conductor do move at the speed of light.
pronoiac 11y ago
The article refers to lower power requirements. One of the problems of higher clock rates is heat dissipation; if this runs a lot cooler, then it might be able to clock much higher.
dogma1138 11y ago
Electrons have mass they can't move at the speed of light. Photons also have other nice properties such as wavelength which open a whole suit of possibilities e.g. like having a logic gate which can operate in different mods based on the wavelength and polarization of the light. While this is technically possible with electronics as well by setting a different voltage limit it's much more effective with photonic computing and doesn't not increase the complexity of your base components as much. The current designs for a photonic computer are also much more parallel most of them basically layers of LED's and detectors with a very fast LCD matrix which serves as a mask between them. if you have a 256x256 pixel screen you can perform an operation on 65536 bits in a single clock, if you stack them up you basically getting 1 order of magnitude with each layer this isn't something you could ever achieve with current solid state electronics.
- mentos 11y ago
  What fraction of the speed of light are electrons moving at in the most advanced silicon chip we have? Trying to understand how much speed is left on the table for us to pick up in serial processing?

mechagodzilla 11y ago

This appears to basically be an analog optical computer - it inputs some 2D data using an LCD, puts it through a bunch of optical transforms, and then captures the output with a camera. This probably does have some kind of obscure use cases where it makes sense, but it's very hard to compete with modern silicon for raw compute using some kind of hybrid method - moving data in and out of the optical part is just painful compared to keeping it all digital/electrical. The main problem is that computers today aren't actually slow =)

imaginenore 11y ago
Today's computers are very slow. Try modeling something complex, let's say 1 billion water molecules interacting. Then realize that 1 billion molecules is orders of orders of magnitude far from modeling a cup of water.
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  > 1 billion molecules is orders of orders of magnitude far Understatement. There are 50 trillion atoms in a cell, 50 trillion cells in a human body (give or take an order of magnitude or two for definitions and caveats). Furthermore, big swaths of chemistry/biochemistry are inherently quantum mechanical (classical mech + E&M doesn't explain why molecules snap into little geometric shapes, let alone how those shapes interact) which has god-awful asymptotic complexity on account of the "present state" of the system (wavefunction) being a probability for each possible configuration of the system rather than a description of a single configuration. A purpose-built silicon supercomputer will struggle to simulate a single small protein using classical-mechanics approximations for a millisecond (and there are millions of those per cell and trillions of cells per body). There's a lot of room for improvement.
  - mechagodzilla 11y ago
    Right, but they didn't build an optical computer that is even close to competitive with something like this:http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc26/HC26-11-day1-epub/HC26.11-1-High-Performance-epub/HC26.11.130-Anton-2-Butts-Shaw-Shaw-Res-Search.pdf http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc26/...

mcnamaratw 11y ago

Oh no, not this stuff again.

reilly3000 11y ago

The better we understand EM radiation effects on all kinds of life the more important this technology will become.