[extropy-chat] Moore != AI (was Re: Taiwan)

[Dirk Bruere]

Eugen Leitl wrote:

>On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 06:00:45AM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I was under the impression we were going to shift to photonic circuits
>>within 3-5 years. That alone is a huge reduction in size and power
>>requirements. What gives?
>>    
>>
>
>Photonics is one of the candidates to solve the signalling problems (data
>rate, power, die area), but mostly off-die. There are alternative solutions
>(e.g. wafer stacking, recently proposed by Intel) proposed, which solve the 
>memory bandwidth problems by providing millions of lanes between CPU cores
>and memory blocks. 
>
>Photonics for switching is only interesting for purely photonic networks
>(which avoid costly and slow photonics-electronics-photonics path). Such
>switches are relatively big, and are power hogs. Very little integration
>density there.
>
>Photonic modulators and waveguides connecting subunits on-die are probably
>more than a decade off. You're probably accurate with 3-5 years estimate 
>for first commercial silicon including fully integrated on-die photonics.
>
>Nobody knows what the first successful product for this will be, though.
>  
>
There are already specialist optical 'computers'.
http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw60/ayoub.html

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org



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