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Processing at the Speed of Light

MasterAkumaMatata - Nov 3, 2003

		MasterAkumaMatata	Nov 3, 2003
		An Israeli startup company has demonstrated a processor that uses optics to process data instead of silicon, enabling it to compute at the speed of light. The device is a digital signal processor that can perform 8 trillion operations per second. It is 1,000 times as fast as a typical PC. It uses 256 lasers to perform calculations. The device processes visual information and will be used in radar, weather forecasting and mobile telephone systems. For details see http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128...w=wn_... What's faster than light speed? :lol:

		Dyne	Nov 3, 2003
		i could see SONY wanting this in the PS3. "better than the emotion engine"!

		Pearl Jammzz	Nov 3, 2003
		haha, and they would claim such things like "Faster than the speed of light!" "pumps 1 billion polygons a sec" etc.........gotta love how sony likes ot hype up it's stuff à BTW, does sony hype evrything else up liek they do their PS consoles? Or so they tell the truth about other items?

		Des-ROW	Nov 3, 2003
		Originally posted by MasterAkumaMatata@Nov 3, 2003 @ 02:55 PM     An Israeli startup company has demonstrated a processor that uses optics to process data instead of silicon, enabling it to compute at the speed of light. The device is a digital signal processor that can perform 8 trillion operations per second. It is 1,000 times as fast as a typical PC. It uses 256 lasers to perform calculations. The device processes visual information and will be used in radar, weather forecasting and mobile telephone systems. For details see http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128...w=wn_... What's faster than light speed? :lol: I would like to know how operation processing is compared with the speed of light... Does this mean that operations are processed before being addressed?

		racketboy	Nov 3, 2003
		yeah how can the eye tell if it's done that soon?

		it290	Nov 3, 2003
		From what I read, this thing isn't real good at the type of complex calculations needed for a general purpose CPU- which is why the intended applications are for embedded devices and the like. Also, keep in mind that there isn't any RAM fast enough to use with this thing, so that's a pretty big limitation as well. As for the 'speed of light' thing, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't electrical pulses travel over a wire at nearly the speed of light anyway?

		Mask of Destiny	Nov 3, 2003
		Over copper I think they travel at about .7 times the speed of light which is still pretty fast, but there are gains that can be made from a move to optical processing.