A Plasmonic Revolution for Computer Chips? 188
Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, we're using basically two ways to move data in our computers: transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size. Now, imagine a single technology combining the advantages of photonics and electronics. This Stanford University report says a new technology can do it: plasmonics. (For more about plasmons, read this Wikipedia article.) Theoretically, it is possible to design plasmonic components with the same materials used today by chipmakers, but with frequencies 100,000 times greater than the ones of current microprocessors. There is still a challenge to solve before getting plasmonic chips. Today, plasmons can only travel a few millimeters before dying, while today's chips are typically about a centimeter across. Read this overview for more details and references about plasmonics, and to discover why it's one possible future for chips' circuitry."
Alright (Score:5, Interesting)
Editors: GIVE HIM HIS OWN DAMN SECTION SO CAN HIDE HIS POSTS
Re:Alright (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's a desceptive practice (Score:2, Offtopic)
Because, the articles come from Roland as if he was just another Slashdot user, which then gives more credibility to the submission [1].
In reality, it's quite clear that there is some sort of business connection between Roland and Slashdot. There is no other reason to accept 100% of Roland's submissions.
It's a desceptive relationship.
[1] Except that the credibility is undermined by the constant complaining of the Slashdot readers.
Re:It's a desceptive practice (Score:2)
I was wrong (Score:2)
This post [slashdot.org] set me straight.
However, 6 accepted submissions in under 30 days is quite suspicious. Perhaps he made 300 submissions, and the editors only accepted 6...
I was wrong. (Score:2)
Re:Alright (Score:1, Insightful)
To see the Roland Piquepaille problem (Score:2, Insightful)
6 articles were submitted in the last month, NONE were rejected. If there were any Rejected articles, they would be displayed under a "Recent Submissions" section.
What are the chances that the Slashdot editors accept 100% of Roland's submissions, when they reject the majority of submissions from other people.
When was the last time YOU had a story accepted by the Slashdot crew
Re:To see the Roland Piquepaille problem (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. You only see your own rejected submissions. Other people can only see your accepted submissions.
Re:To see the Roland Piquepaille problem (Score:2, Offtopic)
What are the chances that the Slashdot editors accept 100% of Roland's submissions, when they reject the majority of submissions from other people.
Who cares?
The real question is whether or not the articles he submits are worth the time of Slashdotters to read and reply to them. I'm not entirely sure what the conspiracy theory is--that he has some arrangement with the editors to accept the stories is one thing I've heard--but I frankly don't care WHO submits a story or WHERE they link it to as long as
Re:To see the Roland Piquepaille problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re:CmdrTaco's response to Roland controversy (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, Roland's writing style is terrible and his command of the technology that he writes about is lackluster at best. Consider:
He compares connectors (optical fiber) to gates (transistors) and implies that they have the same function. He leaves out key points from the article (like the issue of heat is a complete unknown in the world of plamon based chips ). His summaries are blantant rip offs of the articles where he merely combines two ideas into one sentence or vice versa, giving no editorial content of his own . . . it is all editorial content from the article that he links. I can only assume that he is simply unqualified to give free thought and personal editorial content to the material that he submits.
He is not a journalist . . . he is a poor writer that steals editorial ideas and implies that they might be his own. He peppers these ideas with his own analogies that make little to no sense.
I honestly think that he's trying to launch a career as a blogger/technology writer, but I honestly think that he should consider broadening his knowledge of technology and taking some writing courses first.
NOT INSIGHTFUL (Score:2)
no no no , the ONLY reason his site exists is to reap advertising, NOTHING else.
Now, a good site that has a real reason to exist, and has advertsiing, fine.
but this site ONLY exists to reap advertising, and has no product, and is clearly POOR and shouldn't be on
Which is why people hate it!
I considered setting up a network of blogs with auto scriting rss header publishing, 1 line commentary and advertising to plop mys
Re:Your sig (Score:2)
Regardless, it's not a place for Republican grandstanding, nor is it a place for democrats Jesse Jackson to get his face on the news again.
Re:Your sig (Score:2)
Actually, as documented in the court cases, there were three other witnesses that documented her saying on six occasions things that indicated that she didn't want to have her life artificially sustained with no chance of recovery. Like most young people (she was young 15 years ago when this happened) she didn't have a written Living Will, so the court had to make a judgement based on th
Re:Alright (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Alright (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alright (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Alright (Score:2)
Re:Alright (Score:2)
That'll never happen. Every time a Roland story pops on, a bunch of twerps come in and bitch about it. For every bitch-post, there's an ad served. For every ad served, bling bling in Slashdot's pocket.
If you guys would take off your tard hats for a moment, you'd discover that the best way to get rid of the guy is to simply stay out of his threads.
The future is now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let us think of a computer processing unit as a juggler, and bytes as mangoes. Older CPUs would juggle one mango at a time, and frequently require modifications to the stage to boot. Around the 1980s, they could juggle two mangoes. Then four around 1990, and today as many as eight at a time! Now you would be expected to be quite impressed with each leap, notwithstanding the fact that you really wanted a juggler that could handle melons, grapefruit, or watermelon slices instead of (or in addition to) mangoes. In addition, the fact that you are juggling in a zoo where a primate is free to grab your fruit and substitute twigs (or worse!) mid-juggle owing to something called "stack smashing" in computer terminology is not supposed to discourage you.
There is a movement towards something called mutable paragraphs, where as in English "words" (groups of bytes) can be of different lengths depending on need. This may mean the ability to exactly fill out a data page for better efficiency, or to allow the CPU to work with communication protocols in their element (if a common network packet is 68 bytes long, a word should be ½NP or 34 bytes in the I/O buffer.) It also means that you use no more CPU space than you absolutely need to for a computational step, decreasing wear and tear on your components.
I guess what I'm getting at is that science fiction has nothing on practical interative design for real world technological improvement. Sure, we might get to the same place we read about 50 years ago, but not all in one step.
Re:The future is now. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The future is now. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The future is now. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The future is now. (Score:2)
other advantage (Score:2)
Re:The future is now. (Score:2)
Did you mean "interactive" or "iterative"? It's just one letter difference either way!
Re:The future is now. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see it working (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can see it working (Score:2)
Either that, or we change the gravitational constant of the universe. Take your pick.
Re:I can see it working (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I can see it working (Score:2)
Re:I can see it working (Score:2)
Heat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heat (Score:2)
Re:Heat (Score:1)
Re:Heat (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Heat (Score:3, Insightful)
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants;
instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead
of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the
program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
The ironic thing about that cookie is... (Score:3, Interesting)
then from that point onwards, both 2 and PI would assume the value of R squared, so if R started out bein
Re:Heat (Score:5, Informative)
Power does usually scale with the frequency, but it also scales with the signal strength (number of carriers: intensity in a photonic case, ~voltage in an electronic case). If you can up the frequency by a factor of two and cut the voltage (for instance) by a factor of two, it's the same power usage.
Of course, using E = hf is completely wrong here - that's the energy of a photon, and in a completely photonic chip, wouldn't matter in the tiniest bit - because the photons are emitted at one point, and absorbed at another, so there's no net energy loss.
Most of the places where the frequency dependence comes in are energy losses - like the resistance of a wire. With light, there's very little energy loss (in a fiber, for instance), so the chip will run very, very cool.
Re:Heat (Score:2)
RE: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
There are other fundimental constants in information theory that demonstrate a quantum effect for a single bit of data being manipulated... regardless of the effeciency of the device that is being used. There are fundimental information theory limits to how little energy can be consumed to
Re: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
Well, yes, but that energy is miniscule, even at optical frequencies. Even if you assume that it was changing a megab
Re: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
Re: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
Optical systems are orders of ma
Re: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
I think that FTL communication is a virtual impossibility, and some very fundimental physics reasoning must be developed to make it happen.
I only comment about FTL communication because the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office granted a patent for FTL communication. The examiner must ha
Re: the formula E=hf (Score:2)
And if that person has a perpetual motion machine and FTL travel, then he can get around both the speed of light issues and the heat issues!
For most of todays semiconductor chips... (Score:2)
Of course if you switch to superconductor logic you would not have to chagre the whole line (and there is no voltage except the instance Josephson jucntion switches), but this is a topic for another discussion.
Other than that, yes, you are correct that you will need roughly 100,000 times more energy
Re:For most of todays semiconductor chips... (Score:2)
I said scale, not scale linearly. I didn't want to confuse the issue.
Re:For most of todays semiconductor chips... (Score:2)
surface plasmon resonance (Score:2)
Since that's the most intelligent remark I've seen for this story, I'm going to jack this thread. Plasmons still seem like magic to me, but I get to use the technology for something useful while electrical engineers figure out how to make plasmon comput
Plasmonics for Invisibility (Score:4, Interesting)
If anyone wants anymore info on this check out this link [slashdot.org].
Re:Plasmonics for Invisibility (Score:2)
Re:Plasmonics for Invisibility (Score:2)
Re:Plasmonics for Invisibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I know where all the alien nanobugs are hiding (Score:2)
And yes, you alien Lords of the Nanobuts, I'll shut up now.
Nah. (Score:2)
Plasmonics does not sound like... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Plasmonics does not sound like... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Your sig (Score:2)
Re:Plasmonics does not sound like... (Score:2)
Sounds like.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in that case, it sounds similar to my research. See, if you jump, you can fly. Now currently, I can only fly a foot or two. Of course, most people want to fly longer distances, but it's a start.
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'see, I started with a full size parachute, and each time I make a jump I use a slightly smaller chute than last time. Eventually I won't need a parachute at all!
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like.... (Score:2)
You need to start by throwing yourself at the ground from a high point, so gravity is giving you a big helping hand... and then the most important step... practise MISSING the ground... Therein lies the secret.
Maybe use nano-wires? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe use nano-wires? (Score:2)
Wiki Free (Score:1, Interesting)
Wikipedia, because the tyranny of the persistant must be right.
Re:Wiki Free (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has done some research on surface plasmons, I find the wikipedia article on Plasmon to be accurate and useful, so I think it is a good reference. Not all wikipedia articles are so good, but then again I don't reference the bad ones.
On the other hand, you are pointing out that we shouldn't accept wikipedia articles just because wikipedia is cool and lots of people edited the article so it must be right. Yes, that's valid. However, as with *all* sources of information, whether it is a wiki or slashdot or an encyclopedia or the local news, the end-consumer MUST use his judgement to decide if the information is valid or BS. It is an illusion to think that traditional sources of information are error free. In all cases, the reader must simply use judgement and double-check if things seem wrong.
Re:Wiki Free (Score:2, Insightful)
More the fact that a person with an agenda could replace clean methodical bias free information with drivel changing the view for everyone in the process.
The original source may not have the time or inclination to maintain his articles, so the biased view remains.
It may be required in the long run to have a karma/points system - much like slashdot, where particular versions of articles can be rated and those written by established experts gain great
Re:Wiki Free (Score:2)
More the fact that a person with an agenda could replace clean methodical bias free information with drivel changing the view for everyone in the process.
The original source may not have the time or inclination to maintain his articles, so the biased view remains.
This, by the way, is one of the things the Xanadu hypertext system was intended to prevent.
A link-end was not just to a particular page, but a particular section of text (as small as a si
Plasmonics? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Plasmonics? (Score:1)
Wendy O'Williams... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, plasMONICS... my bad...
(I know, I know: she's deceased)
Ob. MST3k reference (Score:3, Funny)
What the...? (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be useful for things like memory and processor interconnects, because you could shove gigantic amounts of data. Hence the reason that the article stresses their use as high-traffic freeways. I'm not sure I see the point in an all-plasmonic chip (unless they've got power advantages) because of size concerns.
/ME is looking forward to... (Score:2)
With a name like that, plasmonics doesn't have to have any point as long as it also looks cool. (-:
Could somebody explain this? (Score:2)
I mean, having a pipe that can transport huge amounts of data at the speed of light is great, but wouldn't the feasibility of a chip depend on the capability of routing all that data based on basic logical conditions?
Kinda like no use having a missile that can carry a million tons and fly at Mac
Re:Could somebody explain this? (Score:2)
The transistor speed that matters is the switching frequency (that is, how fast it can switch from a 1 to a 0, and vice versa). That's what the "GHz" means, right? OK.
The point here is that it would be pointless to have a CPU made of transistors that switched at 100 THz (optical) frequencies. It wouldn't be faster at all.
Why? Because that chip still has to be made of atoms, and atoms have a scale. That scale is on the order of nanometers. Let's just say 1 nanometer, to mak
Re:What the...? (Score:2)
Read it again. I said electronic signals, not electrons. I chose my words carefully. Read more carefully next time.
Re:What the...? (Score:2)
I agree - that's mainly what I was thinking.
The important thing to re
Transistors move data? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about your computer, but my computer uses wires to move data and transistors to process said data. I don't see how one can compare transistors to fiber optic cables.
Yet another SciFi point of view... (Score:3, Interesting)
is it just me, or... (Score:2)
Re:is it just me, or... (Score:2)
Actually I'm still not convinced it's not...
Given time, more feasible? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe its just me, but as electronics become smaller and smaller, wouldn't this be more and more possible?
Just in time (manditory joke) (Score:3, Funny)
7 years: Develop efficient plasmonic tech.
5 years: Create manufacturing process
+3 years: Design cpu
________________________________
15 years: Just in time for Duke Nukem Forever
Well, duh (Score:2)
Heh, this is a bad idea. (Score:2)
Excellent! Babbage Engines by the carat... (Score:2)
Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
From the summary:
transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size.
Transistors are just switches in the digital world. Just like anything that would be modulating the optical carrier.
Fiber optic cables arent switches at all, or even active. You cant even compare them with transistors at all. Compare transistors maybe with an optical switch (which are ususally transistor actuated) or compare fiber optic cable with wires, but not transistors with FO cables.
Roland's blog is just as bad . . . (Score:2)
Plasmons are generated when, under the right conditions, light strikes a metal. The electric field of the light jiggles the electrons in the metal to the light's frequency, setting off density waves of electrons. The process is analogous to how the vibrations of the larynx jiggle molecules in the air into density waves experienced as sound.
This analogy makes no sense because this is not analogous to how the larnyx jiggles air
Actually, some of them are. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, some of them are.
One really useful example is doping the fiber with small amounts of an atom that lases in the frequency band of the light being carried. Then you wrap a bit of the fiber around a lamp giving off a suitable higer pump frequency of light. Result: A repeater amplifier. Feed it a little power and it boosts your signal.
There are several other hacks. (At least one of them is a logic gate.)
The State of Roland's Mind . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on Roland, give us a break . . . you obviously don't understand what your writing about. Your analogies make no sense, your summarize is full of gross holes and you're trying to "sex-up" plasmons by calling a natural phonomena a technology and saying that it's something "new" when it is not. And seems you're doing this to attract hits to your blog so that you can sell ad space.
I know this post is harsh, but I have to say that it appears that you are attempting to exploit the /. community for your own personal financial gain. We /. readers aren't as gullible or stupid as you seem to think . . .
a few mm is not a problem (Score:2)
Re:Not a plasmonic mirror (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't know how much fat you'd have to trim to get it down to a "few millimeters." So a few could be 3 or 4 milimeters which would be
While an all-plasmo
Getting back to the subject... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not a plasmonic mirror (Score:2)