You are currently viewing SemiWiki as a guest which gives you limited access to the site. To view blog comments and experience other SemiWiki features you must be a registered member. Registration is fast, simple, and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
Is this a viable technology in the near future or a far off dream? I've read a number of different views and would like the wisdom of the community on this one. Any additional comments or observations welcome. Also, any views on how this will fit in with current fabrication technology.
Is this a viable technology in the near future or a far off dream? I've read a number of different views and would like the wisdom of the community on this one. Any additional comments or observations welcome. Also, any views on how this will fit in with current fabrication technology.
I always get a headache when I truly try to understand quantum computing and then I give up. But what I think to have understood is that quantum computing can only accelerate a subset of the problems for which computers are used at the moment; I don't have any idea how big a subset this is.
Optical computers have been researched in the past but there one of the problem was the storage elements. How do you store a photon like you store a bit in registers and SRAMs on electronic digital chips ?
Staf, is it possible to have a hybrid structure with part of the chip being photonic and part being electronic to get around fixed or storage states? Perhaps on separate layers? Do you think light could be used to trigger a RRAM memory that relies on a phase change in material? Could this be the ideal interface between photonics and electronics?
Hi Arthur,
As Sir Verhaegen pointed out quantum computation application could be limited.
Some common information you might be interested in.
Photonics are big and none scalable ~250nm?
They got many modules to deal with the problem like storage, transport an so on. Each has its own difficulty and so on.
So in short, this is suitable for a big guy on the cloud. And those researchers just wants to size up their lab work.
There was a page on semiwiki regarding photonics foundry implementation several months ago. I did not find it. But maybe Sir Dan can help you locate it. They claimed to launch photonics platform based on robust foundry solution.
So I mean the cost can be low. Return: even if the application could limit the cash reward, human history will record that giant step. And I believe that is cool!
Staf, is it possible to have a hybrid structure with part of the chip being photonic and part being electronic to get around fixed or storage states? Perhaps on separate layers?
I think the loss due to photon to electronic conversion and back will be significantly higher than the improvement gained in performance or power by using optical computing.
Do you think light could be used to trigger a RRAM memory that relies on a phase change in material? Could this be the ideal interface between photonics and electronics?
First of all, quantum computing and photonic computing are two totally different things although many quantum computing experiment tends to use photonic platform since entangled photon is much easier to achieve and maintain than "matter" particles.
Secondly, both technologies are far off in practice (sadly said from people like myself working on photonics). For people who are interested, you can read all the applause from media and criticism from experts for the quantum computer built by D-Wave.
I quickly went through this Science paper ( I'm not an expert in this topic) and found it amusing how often media exaggerate a research result which is usually only a piece of the puzzle (and sometimes challenged by later experiments). Well, what can I say. Nature and Science have very good PR teams. I dealt with them before
