Talk:Optical computing

AFAIK While photons are much faster than electrons both electrical current and electromagnetic waves propagate at the speed of light. What matters is the heat dissipated and the transistor switching times. Julian

NB: This page is meant to emphasize the role of photons and photonics in optical computing. Also "photonic computing" is a term coming into more and more use ... perhaps because photon computing needs to be differentiated from quantum computing ... or it sounds more exotic than optical computing. Twang 22:13, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Agree with above. Suggest merging in Photonic logic as a subsection, and creating section covering different technologies for crystals, liquid state, nanoncavities etc. --Cedders 13:38, 17 April 2006 (UTC) Intel makes first photonic computer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.197.87.94 (talk) 19:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The introductory paragraph is riddled with technical innacuracies (mostly in the form of ommission), and should be reworked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.171.79.50 (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

plasmonic logic gates
Anyone heard of this? It seems relevant, as it deals with the concept of plasmonics to create an OR gate.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-8949/90/4/045501/pdf;jsessionid=61BE0C007F3FAD2EDC77EAD079D11BF8.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org - Design and analysis of an all optical OR gate using surface plasmon hopping along metallic nanorods

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n7/full/ncomms1388.html - Cascaded logic gates in nanophotonic plasmon networks

Contradiction: power
This article appears to contradict itself on the issue of power consumption, first saying it will reduce it then saying that reduced power consumption is a myth. - Whitepaw (talk) 14:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I think this may have to do with my comment below, in that the increased power consumption is attributed to "short range optical communications" (Which I assume is a cable like the Thunderbolt) rather than actual optical chips. Pixelgel (talk) 04:44, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

currently used tech
Consider adding intel lightpeak technology as one example, as well as other multiplexing systems? Aditya.m4 (talk) 11:26, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

speed
Compared to electrons, photons are much faster – light travels about 30 cm, or one foot, in a nanosecond – and have a higher bandwidth.

What is the speed of the eletron —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex Rio Brazil (talk • contribs) 18:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The speed that the electrons move in a device depends on the voltage applied to the device. However, both electrical and optical signals propagate using photons (source). The benefits of optical computing over electrical computing have nothing to do with the fact that photons are faster than electrons.

Right, the signal propagation speed isn't what is important, it's the switching time of the nonlinear element in the logic system. For electrical systems this is the gate voltage of the transistor, limited by the capacitance of the gate-oxide transistor. For optical logic systems it is the response time of the nonlinear optical medium. For semiconductor devices it is typically the relaxation time of the gain medium, which is on the order of a nanosecond and described by the semiconductor rate equations. For an effect like four-wave mixing it is determined by the nonlinear response time of the polarization of individual atoms, which is estimated to be >1 ps. Dougjorgesen (talk) 01:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Light colour moves at different speed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.149.46.63 (talk) 11:07, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if the speed of photons vs. electrons is instrumental but what I do know is that conducting electrons are exceedingly slower than electromagnetic waves. See https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-fast-does-electricity-flow/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Polariseke (talk • contribs) 10:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Links
The links at the bottom are mostly "broken". An one of them points to a site where you have to pay $25 to see the content... I think we could do better looking for links! I'm going to check again in a few days (in case the breakage is temporary) and remove the broken links, an hopefully add a few non-broken ones to replace them. Slothie (talk) 10:01, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Talking about Optical Communication
The 'Misconceptions, challenges and prospects' first lists a misconception about power usage in short range optical communication. Doesn't that belong in an article about optical communication, not computing? Pixelgel (talk) 04:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci283992,00.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. NortyNort (Holla) 07:02, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

stray text
The below was stuck under "further reading" but I think it needs a better home:

Optical Implemnetation of Bounded non Deterministic Turing Machine, Patent by Shlomi Dolev and Yuval Nir Filed May 2003 in Israel, May 2004 USA; Solving Hamiltonian, and other NP-Complete problems. --- -- phoebe / (talk to me) 21:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Analog optical computing
The term "optical computing" has been used for decades to refer to any kind of (numeric or mathematical) computation done using light, such as the canonical 4F processor. But this article currently only reflects the much narrower area of digital optical computing. An expansion of the article would be great. Some starter sources might be Saleh and Teich, "Fundamentals of Photonics," or Goodman, "Fourier Optics." WakingLili (talk) 01:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

There is a brief mention of analog optical computing in the text, referencing SAR and correlators. It needs more and perhaps an introduction showing the historical context.Tedweverka (talk) 14:36, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Recent research

 * Want your computer to go faster? Just add light, February 26, 2014, TG Daily
 * North­eastern Uni­ver­sity assis­tant pro­fessor of physics Swastik Kar and his col­league Yung Joon Jung, an asso­ciate pro­fessor in the Depart­ment of Mechan­ical and Indus­trial Engi­neering,
 * They dis­cov­ered that light-​​induced elec­trical cur­rents rise much more sharply at the inter­sec­tion of carbon nan­otubes and sil­icon, com­pared to the inter­sec­tion of sil­icon and a metal, as in tra­di­tional pho­to­diode devices. “That sharp rise helps us design devices that can be turned on and off using light,” Kar said.

—  Ark25  (talk) 06:29, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

New Company
There is a new company, Optalysys, working on making an optical supercomputer. May be bogus, may be revolutionary: http://optalysys.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.9.178.102 (talk) 18:36, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Seems like they are still in business as of 2023. - Indefensible (talk) 00:09, 2 July 2023 (UTC)