3 ms·

It may be hard to correctly anticipate what impact this breakthrough will have, but i get the sense that this combine with quantum computing could change our fu

It may be hard to correctly anticipate what impact this breakthrough will have, but i get the sense that this combine with quantum computing could change our future pretty quickly. I feel excited about it and frightened at the same time ...

jaibot 11y ago
Looks like they're pretty unrelated accomplishments; this enables faster interchip communication, while quantum computers enable speedup of a very specific subset of problems if you can get enough qubits within a chip to play nice.
- Strilanc 11y ago
  Communicating between quantum computers will probably involve photons. They're pretty good at traveling far fast coherently. ... Not good enough that we won't need to use a quantum error correcting code and repeaters that pump out the decoherence errors along the way, but still important.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
You may be interested in HP's research into 'The Machine'. I disagree with some of the use cases being proposed, but it's certainly possible that the technologies involved could provide big steps forward for computing power. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-labs-machine-dissolves-the-difference-between-disk-and-memory/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-lab...
typon 11y ago
This breakthrough isn't really anything that spectacular in my opinion. Sure they've integrated photonic communication with a standard CMOS process, but the advantage here is mainly bandwidth and power over existing processes. I imagine integrating Hybrid-Memory Cube or High-Bandwidth Memory with a processor die (2.5D or actual 3D) would likely give you higher bandwidth at lower TOTAL* power and lower latency. * In a lot of these photonics papers they conveniently forget to mention the power it takes to shine the lasers, and they only focus on the joules/bit number required in the communication. I suspect if you added up the entire power it would be higher overall than an electronic circuit.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
This seems to enable higher bandwidth inside a box at lower cost. Quantum computer offers exponential speed ups for very specific types of problems and with huge constant costs. They seem rather orthogonal to me.

jaibot 11y ago

Looks like they're pretty unrelated accomplishments; this enables faster interchip communication, while quantum computers enable speedup of a very specific subset of problems if you can get enough qubits within a chip to play nice.

Strilanc 11y ago
Communicating between quantum computers will probably involve photons. They're pretty good at traveling far fast coherently. ... Not good enough that we won't need to use a quantum error correcting code and repeaters that pump out the decoherence errors along the way, but still important.

ZenoArrow 11y ago

You may be interested in HP's research into 'The Machine'. I disagree with some of the use cases being proposed, but it's certainly possible that the technologies involved could provide big steps forward for computing power. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-labs-machine-dissolves-the-difference-between-disk-and-memory/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-lab...

typon 11y ago

This breakthrough isn't really anything that spectacular in my opinion. Sure they've integrated photonic communication with a standard CMOS process, but the advantage here is mainly bandwidth and power over existing processes. I imagine integrating Hybrid-Memory Cube or High-Bandwidth Memory with a processor die (2.5D or actual 3D) would likely give you higher bandwidth at lower TOTAL* power and lower latency. * In a lot of these photonics papers they conveniently forget to mention the power it takes to shine the lasers, and they only focus on the joules/bit number required in the communication. I suspect if you added up the entire power it would be higher overall than an electronic circuit.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

This seems to enable higher bandwidth inside a box at lower cost. Quantum computer offers exponential speed ups for very specific types of problems and with huge constant costs. They seem rather orthogonal to me.