"All-Optical Computing and All-Optical Networks are Dead
Anxiously awaiting the arrival of all-optical computing? Don’t hold your breath."
Charles Beeler, El Dorado Ventures and Craig Partridge, BBN
queue.acm.org
"You see, building an optical computer or router entails a critical step called optical regeneration, which nobody knows how to do. After at least two decades of research and well over a [BILLION] dollars of venture-capital spending on promising potential breakthroughs, it is pretty clear that we’ve tried all the obvious ways and a fair number of the nonobvious ways to do optical regeneration. It appears that solving the problem is not a matter of top-class engineering; rather, it’s beginning to look like Nobel-Prize-winning physics..."
"Currently the only way to build regenerators is to build an OEO (optical-electronic-optical) device: the inbound signal is translated from the optical domain into a digitized sample; the electronic component removes the noise from the digitized sample and then uses the cleaned-up digitized sample to drive a laser that emits a clean signal in the optical domain. OEO regenerators work just fine, but they slow us down by forcing us to work at the speed of electronics." ...
"So, if we are going to assemble the wonderful optical circuits into an optical computer, right now and for the foreseeable future, for every handful of circuits we will need a regenerator, and the only regenerators we have require slow electronics. Oops!"
Could LWLG technology solve this problem? And,if so, maybe it's a bit premature to say that all-optical computing & all-optical networks are dead.
GATES.
One more article (from 11/07) concerning optical computing:
news.bbc.co.uk
"However, it may be some time before optical components compete with silicon because of a fundamental barrier. . .
'The reason it is not in circuits today is essentially cost,' said Professor Williams" |
