3 ms·

> 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

> 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?