Is optic going replace electronic parts?

[Troler]

What is your opinion about optic VS electronic technology?

Here's a snip from "Nature" e-paper about optic technology in computers related to AI:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03572-y#ref-CR7

 

"Electrons are the carriers of information in electronic computing, but photons have long been considered an alternative option. Because the spectrum of light covers a wide range of wavelengths, photons of many different wavelengths can be multiplexed (transmitted in parallel) and modulated (altered in such a way that they can carry information) simultaneously without the optical signals interfering with each other. This propagation of information at the speed of light results in minimal time delays. Moreover, passive transmission (in which no input power is required) aids ultralow power consumption⁷, and phase modulation (whereby the quantum-mechanical phases of light waves are varied) enables light to be easily modulated and detected at frequencies greater than 40 gigahertz.

In the past few decades, great success has been attained in optical-fibre communication. However, it remains challenging to use photons for computing, especially at a scale and performance level comparable to those of state-of-the-art electronic processors. This difficulty arises from a lack of suitable parallel-computing mechanisms, materials that permit high-speed nonlinear (complex) responses of artificial neurons and scalable photonic devices for integration into computing hardware.

Fortunately, developments over the past few years in devices called optical frequency combs⁹ brought new opportunities for integrated photonic processors. Optical frequency combs are sets of light sources with emission spectra that consist of thousands or millions of sharp spectral lines that are uniformly and closely spaced in frequency. These devices have achieved substantial success in various fields, such as spectroscopy, optical-clock metrology and telecommunication, and were recognized with the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. Optical frequency combs can be integrated into a computer and used as power-efficient energy sources for optical computing. This system is well suited for data parallelization by wavelength multiplexing.

Xu and colleagues used such a set-up to produce a versatile integrated photonic processor. This device performs a type of matrix–vector multiplication known as a convolution for image-processing applications. The authors implemented an ingenious method to carry out the convolution. They first used chromatic dispersion — whereby the speed of transmitted light depends on its wavelength — to produce different time delays for wavelength-multiplexed optical signals. They then combined these signals along the dimension associated with the wavelength of the light."

[RAS_3885]

Sounds like the article is talking about quantum computing. It very useful, but in very specific applications.

 

Each has their place but I don't see traditional silicon-based computer chips being phased out anytime soon.

[starry]

Not in the consumer space.

[ayyeff]

20 minutes ago, RAS_3885 said:

Sounds like the article is talking about quantum computing. It very useful, but in very specific applications.

 

Each has their place but I don't see traditional silicon-based computer chips being phased out anytime soon.

This isn't quantum computing, that's a completely different paradigm.

That being said, yeah, Moore's Law is ending and the way forward is looking at other materials to make electronic processors with, or use photons for our processing.

I feel that when the need gets pressing, this development will accelerate.