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There are applications where silicon photonics outperforms semiconductor electronics. Imagine the performance you could get out of similarly sized optical gates

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
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- 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.