whither optical computers !


Its quite common these days to come across talks and papers that talk about "photons replacing electrons" in computation and communication

Coming from an ex-nanoelectronics background, and now rooted in a micro-ultrafast-optics {well , I can stretch my field into the nano regime by claiming that my Bragg gratings are in nms... 100s of nms that is :-) } , I obviously cannot be biased towards either of them, you see..

And yet, I must say that optics have a looooong way to catch up ... eventhough terms like nanolasers and nanooptics are freely floating around... to be able to challenge the "conventional" (Oh, well "traditional" may be) electron based (either Si or even III-V) ones will be quite a challenge ... how much ever you talk about improved switching speeds and stuff ...

Neways, here's a nice article that I came across... once more, optimistically loyal to the field
http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~sth/SA.pdf

7 years have passed ever since that one, and I am not sure how much closer we are to that "one day" thats mentioned in the last para , but the good thing is that the field in general doesn't seem to be too obsessed with challenging the hegemony of electron-based stuff.. Rather it has diversified itself into finding applications in other field, especially medical field (Oh yeah, remember LASIK ?)

Good for you.. and me.. and world at large .. after all, by birth LASERS are characterised as "a solution waiting for a problem", right ?

-arun

ps: From NEMS to nanobio to nanochemi to nano-economics to nanowhatever (nanoarun !!) to... "nanotech" is now being used in... guess what.. textiles !!
http://nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=3226

some one please tell me what thats all about !

Pic source: http://www.novomilenio.inf.br/ano98/nanogtr.jpg

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