Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
James Poulos, Ed. ·
Sep 16, 2010 at 8:28pm
Over to you, Singularity fans:
Research conducted at the University of Bristol means a number of quantum computing algorithms may soon be able to execute calculations of a complexity far beyond what today's computers allow us to do. The breakthrough involves the use of a specially designed optical chip to perform what's known as a "quantum walk" with two particles ... and it suggests the era of quantum computing may be approaching faster than the scientific establishment had predicted.
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Jun '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
Here's another one for you, James, I heard that Intel has solved the fiberoptic electronic interface, thus paving the way for fiberoptic motherboards that interface with silicon CPUs. If this is true, get ready for tear-your-head-off computer speeds. And coming sooner than anyone thinks will be optic (as in light-based) storage divices. What this will do is take the impossibly small storage devices the size of today's flash drives and increase their capacity to store information anywhere from ten to one hundred times.
Jul '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
I have three words for those who think this is the next great thing:
Heat transfer problems.
Aug '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
Holy smoke. Singularity indeed. One day we'll wake up and the machines will have everything under their control, and we'll never see the exponential change coming. That's the way exponents work, quantum leaps.
I fervently hope I'm not around on that day, because all of mankind will be reduced to a kind of childhood. However, if the machines choose to be benign.... who knows?
Truth is always stranger than fiction, is it not?
May '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
Frank Tipler took care of this in Wired years ago.
http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/wired.html
May '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
Duane Oyen: Frank Tipler took care of this in Wired years ago.
http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/wired.html · Sep 17 at 10:10am
Duane, I have 2 reactions to Tipler's article: one is that it has a very strong Teilhard de Chardin vibe; the other is that my intuition is telling me very loudly that he's nuts.
Edited on Sep 17, 2010 at 2:12pmMay '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
A friend of mine helped research quantum computing at Case Western. I'd hate to think I have to start respecting him.
May '10
Re: Quantum Leap: Computer Chips to Run on Light
Fredösphere
Duane Oyen: Frank Tipler took care of this in Wired years ago.
Duane, I have 2 reactions to Tipler's article: one is that it has a very strong Teilhard de Chardin vibe; the other is that my intuition is telling me very loudly that he's nuts. · Sep 17 at 11:46am
He is brilliant, but clearly has a fixation on the provability of the unprovable (see The Physics of Immortality). But his theses are no more nuts than Hawking's latest. When you get into the most esoteric elements of The Landscape (extreme and deliberately vague extensions of string theory), it goes beyond the nutty quasi-religious. I mentioned here before that David Berlinski has a pretty good discussion and takedown of that class of argument in The Devil's Delusion.
Michael Tee mentions the largest problem, of course. When everything is packed so tightly, there is simply no place for heat to go. You set aside "tunnels" for thermal transfer and you have lengthened the signal path, thus self-defeating the whole point, which was to speed up by shortening the distance.