4 ms·

For comparison, silicon photonics is at 1500nm

• jacquesm 4y ago
  What is the purpose of this comparison?
  • Beltiras 4y ago
    There are applications where silicon photonics outperforms semiconductor electronics. Imagine the performance you could get out of similarly sized optical gates.
    • HPsquared 4y ago
      Wouldn't the size be limited by the wavelength of light used in the chip? Visible light wavelength is a range approx. a few hundred nm.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • Beltiras 4y ago
        Yes, you are right. I didn't know that current tech is using 1550nm light. Wouldn't want to imagine the heat coming off the optical CPU using 2nm light. Yikes.
        • mkl 4y ago
          That would be an X-ray, very challenging to do.
        • jacquesm 4y ago
          It's not about heat, it's about rays like that penetrating your receiver instead of setting up a field. It would also give 'side channel attack' a whole new meaning.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Imagination isn't what drives this, materials science is. This comparison as far as I can see is utterly meaningless, it is about as apples-to-oranges as it gets.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      There are startups out of MIT like Ayer labs using 30 nm node tech to make grating couplers, but fundamentally if you are using light with a wavelength of 1500 nm, there is a limitation in how much it could possibly matter to go to single digit nms due to the nature of light.