I want to ask anybody opinian here, is it possible to replace electricity with light? To be exact i've been thinking about a microchips that use light instead of electrical current. The thiner than hair aluminium wiring will be replace by thinner than hair fiber optic line. my question mark lies in the matter of components. Is there any materials that can mimic the function of transistors with light as the normal transistor with electricity, i mean like PNP and NPN thing? any opinion?
Optical chip
- Thread starter Awang se
- Start date
Yes, it is happening already. I worked on a project 2 years ago where scientists were using a light beam as a connection for a circuit.
The technology is available, but I think its still classified. (well it was when I was involved).
I'll see if it's permitted to say anything else beyond what I've just mentioned (which isn't classified)
The technology is available, but I think its still classified. (well it was when I was involved).
I'll see if it's permitted to say anything else beyond what I've just mentioned (which isn't classified)
gf0012 said:
yeas i have heard of this break through it happened here at Toshiba Cambridge Labs which is closely affiliated with the UNiversity of Cambridge the break through was the LED which can produce a single beam of Photon it is so consistent that it would only produce a single beam of photon which makes it adaptable to the Micro Hub were designed its not much of a chip but it can be called one!! the LED technology would be used in secured Commercial and Military communication systems. As you you all know unwanted interception of INformation is always the case in secured communications but know they have a physical medium that can tell instantaneously that if the Com link was intercepted becasue the com devices work with a single ray of beam with time sensative Comunication so if some one intercept the Beem the timeing would be disrupted and it would be obvious that that the Beam stoped for a while which would tell people that the data recieved was compromised.I Don't think this is classified by any DOD but Toshiba Hold INformation regarding its breakthroughs very seriously!! it works similarly to other Datalinks i am sure Shamyel here would have some information About it.
But now that we can can produce a single Beam of photon that should enhance our capabilities and should bring us a step closer to Optical chips
Last Time i heard the Australians made a breakthrough in read a quantum signature of a beam and replicating it across the room!! impressive Research
Basically we need electric frequency inside buses of computer to carry the data and are called as carrier waves.Now we can easily replace them to optical laser to carry this data.The real problem arise when we need devices to understand and recieve such rays.At the momment converters are in use to read data from bus on optical ray and then input it to devices or transisters.But now too much work is going on to make devices includeing CPU so that they operate directly on fiber optic rather then its conversion first.It will greatly increase the performance of computers.
Israeli company already made such processor and motherboard in which internal working of CPU is also on optical rays.
Israeli company already made such processor and motherboard in which internal working of CPU is also on optical rays.
suleman said:
Amazing so a partial optical system has been developed !!) at this point we shouldn't be bothered about its processing spead we should work on produceing the chips so the technology can be perfected and them work on optimization !!
Has any one heard of the Apple G5 super computer at virginia tech. its the third fastest and the cheapest Super computer cluster in the world its total cost was about 5 mill dollar and took a large room and six weeks to construct amazeing each G5 UNit (with two 2 ghz 64bit double floating point precision) is linked up with Infiniy band networks so in a way those infiniy band networking acts as busses if you count each G5 unit as processing unit!!!
http://www.apple.com/hardware/video/virginiatech/
http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/techclusterphotos/
http://www.apple.com/education/science/profiles/vatech/
Apperntly INFINIY Band is from a Israel Based Mellanox Technologies they worked so hard so they could make the Infini work with OSX UNix platform they worked in Apple's Cupertino Lab in california to develop drivers for OS X in record time.
Very interesting topic guys. Well moving from electrical to optical circuitry is the future in electronics. However it has a long way to go since uptil now optical fibers are mostly used in the trunk network (e.g. upto the local telephone exchanges) while the access network is still made up of tiwsted copper pair wires.
The concept of Fiber to the Curb and Fiber to the Office is one in which the fiber optic network will be having its tentacles right up to the PC or any other node.
Now the problem is that all the circuitry in today's electronics and computers is based around the transistors and is electrical. So there has to be a conversion from electrical to optical and back in order to communicate properly...However new technology will soon make sure that even inside our computers we would have optical links (glass wires instead of copper strips) which would be carrying signals at the speed of light and without interruption.
However I am ignorant about how electrical devices such as transistors, which are basic building blocks of today's electronics, can be mimicked by something optical.
Another interesting thing is the development of optical switches. The switches are in the nanoscale and consist of mirrors which physically deflect the light signals onto different paths. Thus the need for converting optical data packets to electrical ones just in order to route them over a network will be eliminated, thus resulting in more speed and less overhead.
The concept of Fiber to the Curb and Fiber to the Office is one in which the fiber optic network will be having its tentacles right up to the PC or any other node.
Now the problem is that all the circuitry in today's electronics and computers is based around the transistors and is electrical. So there has to be a conversion from electrical to optical and back in order to communicate properly...However new technology will soon make sure that even inside our computers we would have optical links (glass wires instead of copper strips) which would be carrying signals at the speed of light and without interruption.
However I am ignorant about how electrical devices such as transistors, which are basic building blocks of today's electronics, can be mimicked by something optical.
Another interesting thing is the development of optical switches. The switches are in the nanoscale and consist of mirrors which physically deflect the light signals onto different paths. Thus the need for converting optical data packets to electrical ones just in order to route them over a network will be eliminated, thus resulting in more speed and less overhead.
shamayel said:
Yes that is the reason why i was stressing on this breakthrough at the Cambridge Labs toshiba where they developed the single photon beam through a modyfied LED the LED fires a beam which has only one Photon layer in it its the smallest light can ever get i think which can be used with the micro switches you mentioned above those switches have micro mirrors in-side them (unknown to how that works tho) but apparently it has been done at cambridge Labs Toshiba
Revival_786
New Member
Just how fast is optical technology in circuits than normal circuitry (just very rough estimates)? A factor of 100 times? 
Good one adsH! :hehe I don't see how a photon could actually take the place of an electrical charge. I know there are optical couplers that eliminate the electrical connection from one device to another, but ultimately there has to be a way to convert the photon back into an electrical charge via a device. I'm no brainiac that's for sure but is it even possible for a photon to exhibit a physical property other than light? This would be a quantum jump in alot of science if it were true!!
Gremlin29 said:
i have no idea but i bet some type of organic orgnism could be used to produce elctrical impulse when exposed to short burst of Photons hey don't ask me this again lol i am watching to much Star trek these day when i am supose to be studying lol!!!
this what i found about the israeli Infiny band "By adding an InfiniBand card to each Power Mac G5,†says Lockhart, “we get a 10-gigabit-per-second communications fabric. It’s full duplex and capable of ensuring some very low latencies in transmitting data—on the order of 4.5 microseconds for certain packet sizes. Tcluster was 256 nodes,†observes Bortnikov. “It was a tremendous logistical and human effort to "
the Israelis developed the driver for the Infini in about 2 weeks lol they must of worked at a speed not comparable to ordinary humans although the main codeing still remains the same and interface can be taken off apple the schematics for OSX is widely availble but they actually developed it and tested it at apples own development center where testing was probably done by apple Software engineers.
http://www.lenslet.com/products.asp
Here is the link of first optical operated computer.U can even see the pictures of motherboard and CPU.This system also operates by transferring optical signals into electrical signals but not sure abt CPU.
Here is the link of first optical operated computer.U can even see the pictures of motherboard and CPU.This system also operates by transferring optical signals into electrical signals but not sure abt CPU.
Deltared075
New Member
The optical only to replace wires, it transfer data faster and more accurate between electronic hardware.
But if in microchip i think imposible...
How you produce photon in nano scale?
All i know is they are using single electron transistor from quantum dote.
but still it use electrical that mean electron involve here.
But if in microchip i think imposible...
How you produce photon in nano scale?
All i know is they are using single electron transistor from quantum dote.
but still it use electrical that mean electron involve here.