Israeli company builds first optical processor

[Az]

http://www.eedesign.com/pressreleases/prnewswire/102622

erm, so what does that mean?

[Urban Ranger]

Lenslet Ltd., a leader in optical digital signal processing, announced today its intent to unveil the first ever, commercial optical processor.

I think intent is operative word here.

[Az]

What do you mean by that?

oh, and here is their website:

http://www.lenslet.com/

[Urban Ranger]

I am just a bit skeptical.

There were news of quantum computers before, and nothing ever came out of them. So I will believe it when they actually deliever a working model.

[Az]

Optical computer = Quantum computer?

[laurentius]

You know working @ the speed of light etc

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Azazel
Optical computer = Quantum computer?

No.

The major major hurdle, AFAIK, working with light signals is you can't amplify it like you can with electrical signals. That means there's no optical equivalent of a transistor.

Of course, I wasn't really following the scene closely.

[Az]

I guess we'll just have to wait, and see, then.

If true, what does that mean? Does it have any influence on the average person?

[Urban Ranger]

An optical computer will be very fast. Probably very large too at this stage.

That's why they want to sell it to the military. So right now, there's not much influence on the average Joe.

[Az]

That doesn't look very large.

[Urban Ranger]

No, that doesn't look very large.

Though I reckon a much more immediate use for optics is storage (RAM).

[Az]

How would this be done?

[Urban Ranger]

Beats me

I know that RAM is architecturally much simplier than a processor core, though.

[Az]

Yeah, that even I know.

[DanS]

Though I reckon a much more immediate use for optics is storage (RAM).

Holographic memory has been a big bunch of vaporware. It's always one or two years away. This might be true, but we will never know until somebody comes to market with it.

Anyway, unless you have optical memory, you are stuck with low memory bandwidth, which means you can't really use your processor above a normal, primitive state.