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On a scale of zero to really big deal. How much of a big deal is this?

by jonplackett 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
keyle 7y ago
42
artemonster 7y ago
Two bananas
jka 7y ago
"Integrating photonic circuits on conventional electronic chips would enable faster data transfer and lower energy consumption without raising the chip’s temperature, which could make it particularly useful for data-intensive applications like machine learning." Sounds potentially like a big deal :)
perlgeek 7y ago
It's an incremental step in a good direction.
The_rationalist 7y ago
Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... And I'm talking about a fully photonic cpu, not an hybrid one that has a light/electricity translation cost.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  I don't think the win here will be speed, particularly chip level as much as enabling lower power and higher throughout architectures at the system level. As in this is mote likely to be used for medium range links where infiniband/pcie/nvlink are used today.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... How did you come up with that number? The speed of travel? That's not really the main bottleneck in current computer architectures, at least not yet. Using photons would enable quite different architectures that we haven't even conceived of yet.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    How did you come up with that number? Honestly I can't find it :/ I had read this number either in the wiki page of photonic but it's not there anymore (or never was?) Or maybe it was how much faster was light in solids vs electricity speed? At least I could find back However, optoelectronic devices lose 30% of their energy converting electronic energy into photons and back; this conversion also slows the transmission of messages. All-optical computers eliminate the need for optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversions, thus lessening the need for electrical power. So maybe that this number is wrong but has the research really been too mediocre to calculate the real maximum potential speed gain from light alone (and not new way of computing)? Or did they calculate it and decided to not make it visible online because otherwise they would loose funding?

On a scale of zero to really big deal. How much of a big deal is this?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

keyle 7y ago

artemonster 7y ago

Two bananas

jka 7y ago

"Integrating photonic circuits on conventional electronic chips would enable faster data transfer and lower energy consumption without raising the chip’s temperature, which could make it particularly useful for data-intensive applications like machine learning." Sounds potentially like a big deal :)

perlgeek 7y ago

It's an incremental step in a good direction.

The_rationalist 7y ago

Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... And I'm talking about a fully photonic cpu, not an hybrid one that has a light/electricity translation cost.

andromeduck 7y ago
I don't think the win here will be speed, particularly chip level as much as enabling lower power and higher throughout architectures at the system level. As in this is mote likely to be used for medium range links where infiniband/pcie/nvlink are used today.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Photonic can only be up to 20% faster... How did you come up with that number? The speed of travel? That's not really the main bottleneck in current computer architectures, at least not yet. Using photons would enable quite different architectures that we haven't even conceived of yet.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  How did you come up with that number? Honestly I can't find it :/ I had read this number either in the wiki page of photonic but it's not there anymore (or never was?) Or maybe it was how much faster was light in solids vs electricity speed? At least I could find back However, optoelectronic devices lose 30% of their energy converting electronic energy into photons and back; this conversion also slows the transmission of messages. All-optical computers eliminate the need for optical-electrical-optical (OEO) conversions, thus lessening the need for electrical power. So maybe that this number is wrong but has the research really been too mediocre to calculate the real maximum potential speed gain from light alone (and not new way of computing)? Or did they calculate it and decided to not make it visible online because otherwise they would loose funding?