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Meckes/Gerdelblom/Photo Researchers, No Credit |
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For the fastest supercomputers ever, optical signals would be the ticket. Compared to light, electronic signals in chips travel at snail speed. Moreover, there's no such thing as a short circuit with light, so beams could cross with no problem after being redirected by pinpoint-size mirrors in a switchboard similar to the one at right, developed for fiber-optic networks by Agere Systems Inc. (formerly Lucent Microelectronics Group).
Optical computing was a hot research area in the 1980s. But the work tapered off because of materials limitations that seemed to prevent optochips from getting small and cheap enough to ever be more than laboratory curiosities. Now, optical computers are back. Researchers are using new conducting polymers to make transistor-like switches smaller and 1,000 times faster than silicon transistors. And electricity-conducting organic molecules much thinner than semiconductor wires are being teased into self-assembling. These advances promise supertiny all-optical chips. In addition, progress in holographic storage devices is shrinking the Library of Congress down to sugar-cube size. Optical computers could be leaving silicon number-crunchers choking in the dust by decade's end.
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