Production of Photon Processors Expected in 2006 217
ThinSkin writes "Photon processors that transmit data via light, not electrons, are slated to enter production in mid-2006, ExtremeTech reports. Headed by a UCLA professor and a Nobel Prize winner, startup Luxtera claims that its optical modulator clocks in at 10-GHz, tens times that of Intel's optical modulator researchers talked about last year. Since the optical module exists as its own entity, it will require a standard CMOS processes to integrate the optical waveguides. Luxtera has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop this technology."
Error In The Article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:2, Informative)
Photons are light. Protons are not.
A Proton is a neutron with a positron.
Electrons, positrons, protons, and neutrons are particles with mass and they are not light.
When electrons or positrons move (current) they produce electro magnectic waves which are light.
What they develop is the ability of devices like CPU and memory to comunicate using light and thus giving them more bandwidth.
It's a small step toward faster computing and eventualy quantum computing...
Re:Error In The Article (Score:3, Informative)
So they are what, heavy? It's a joke. Perhaps a little too subtle, but a joke none the less. Laugh.
Re:Error In The Article (Score:2)
a failed joke, don't ask for too much out of it
Re:Error In The Article (Score:4, Informative)
A Proton is a neutron with a positron.
No, it's not. A proton is three quarks. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Protons are classified as baryons and are composed of two Up quarks and one Down quark, which are also held together by the strong nuclear force, mediated by gluons. The proton's antimatter equivalent is the antiproton, which has the same magnitude charge as the proton but the opposite sign.
A neutron may decay into a proton+electron pair, but a proton is most definitely not composed of neutron+something else. If nothing else, this should be the proof: neutron is heavier than proton---by conservation of mass and energy, neutron cannot be a component of proton.
When electrons or positrons move (current) they produce electro magnectic waves which are light.
No, it's not when they move that they produce EM waves. It's when they accelerate that it does (if you had been a physicist, this difference would have been carved into your very being). Moving charge only creates a magnetic field, which doesn't necessarily propagate as an oscillating field in space (i.e. EM wave). What you need is not a current but an alternating (as one example) current.
It's a small step toward faster computing and eventualy quantum computing...
Er... I know that you don't know what you are talking about, but this has nothing to do with quantum computing. (O.K. I haven't RTFM (nor do I have interest or time to do so), so I may be wrong on this, but...) This development is analogous to moving to fiber optics from copper cables---it does use a less "lossy" and perhaps faster medium, but it is in no way related to quantum computing.
Re:Error In The Article (Score:3, Informative)
The nucleus of every atom (except for hydrogen, obviously) is smaller than the sum of the masses of its nucleons. If your proof were valid, then they couldn't consist of the nucleons they consist of. The point is that the binding energy also contributes to the mass, and since the binding energy
Re:Error In The Article (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:2)
Re:Error In The Article (Score:3, Informative)
How long until... (Score:3, Funny)
My photons are faster than yours!
Re:How long until... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it just amazes me to think about. With a main clock cycle of 10 billion cycles per second, there would actually be fractional cycles going on at hundreds of billions of cycles per second. The number is staggering; a couple hundred billion times the width of the outer layer of your skin would reach to the moon. The photons will travel through hundreds of thousands of hand-designed gates at the tiniest of scales.
And, of course, the most common usage for this marvel of modern engineering will be to provide better lighting effects in video games.
Re:How long until... (Score:5, Insightful)
When newer processor technologies are developed, they're almost always deligated to server processors before they trickle down to desktop processors. (Of course, there are exceptions: MMX and its spawn, etc).
br. I can't wait to see Pixar pick up the Apple Xserves based on an optical interconnected chip. The movies they'd makewould only get more spectacular.
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
most likely they'll be used by the younger graphic artists in order to obtain [(fp!)at the speed of l16][t, beeoztches].
shame, but it's true.
Re:How long until... (Score:3, Funny)
Safe prediction: by the time we're using photon processors, yes, it will take 7 gHz to load a website....
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Blackcomb (longhorns sucessor) will need more than 7ghz, but maybe microsoft will have a working css implementation by then.
We can only hope.
Re:How long until... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Fact: protein folding is best implemented via grid computing. That way, as newer techonologies come available, you ca
Re:How long until... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am much more impressed with Kaena, Immortel, Sky Captain, Advent Children and the like. Pixar is pass
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
They are a animation studio, so that might not be a bad thing. But if you are looking for breakthroughs in CGI, it might not make sense to look at Pixar.
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
It is your opinion that Pixar is passe, but you must realize that development on the films you mentioned (The Incredible
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
I am not trying to bash Pixar or claim that they don't make good stories (they do) and successful films (though that doesn't mean that Incredibles was better than Immortel: Ad Vitam). I a
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Ever hear about GPUs?
Re:How long until... (Score:2)
Uh, okay (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiprocessor systems for one. (Score:1)
Re:Uh, okay (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever can afford them.
Are these like only special coprocessors for million-dollar supercomputers?
No. These are not "processors" of any sort. It is a new way to modulate signal between CMOS and optical at high frequency and small scale. It may provide faster bus speeds, assuming the reality matches the funding hype.
Are they going to be x86-compatible? MIPS compatible? What?
It will be "compatible" with any CMOS device that needs a bus to communicate with some other device. Since that includes all useful CMOS devices, it will be compatible with everything!
Put them on motherboards (Score:2)
No. These are not "processors" of any sort. It is a new way to modulate signal between CMOS and optical at high frequency and small scale. It may provide faster bus speeds, assuming the reality matches the funding hype.
I suppose then that putting them as the data bus to memory would be the best first thing to do. Imagine being able to read memory at register reading speed, that would be great even if you keep your same Pentium IV processor.
Re:Put them on motherboards (Score:2)
3ns makes the memory access time equivelent to about 333MHz.
What light gives you is more *bandwidth*. That also means you CPU will not run any faster, but it should be able to access to more memory at once. Multi-core/multi-thread processors like wh
Latency != Frequency (Score:5, Informative)
It may take a few nanoseconds for the light to bounce around, but that light can be modulated at extremely high rates (that electrical wires cannot). Managing latency is a well understood problem, generally solved by using speculation, buffering, etc..
The fact is, if these parts are running at 10ghz, you will have 10ghz connections between connected parts (with a few nanoseconds of latency, which is mostly irrelevant).
Bandwidth is a measure of frequency and number of communication channels. This advancement does indeed provide more bandwidth, mostly because it can be clocked higher. All computer configurations could see substantial benefits because current electrical designs have highly limited bus speeds (it is not signal propagation that matters, but signal modulation speed "frequency").
Again, signal propagation speed is mostly irrelevant. Signal modulation speed is what is important. Latency != Frequency.
Re:Latency != Frequency (Score:2, Informative)
The extra bandwidth does indeed allow more in-flight memory accesses, but there are many problems involved with this.
First of all, there are implicit problems in the memory-level parallelism in applications. How many memory accesses are independent of eac
Re:Latency != Frequency (Score:2)
To see the effects of greater bus speed, just look at a G5 vs a G4. The difference would be much more pronounced when you move to th
Re:Uh, okay (Score:2, Informative)
--
Want a free iPod? [freeipods.com]
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof [wired.com]
Re:Uh, okay (Score:2)
Since it's Freescale (née Motorola) that's mentioned in the article, any general-purpose CPU appearing from this effort will probably be ARM-based. However, the most likely application will be specialized processors for multi-gigabit network routers.
Schwab
Re:Uh, okay (Score:3, Informative)
Really? I wasn't aware that Freescale made ARM processors, too. After all, when it comes to microprocessors, they're primarily known for 68k and PowerPC.
Re:Uh, okay (Score:2)
Routers -- Freescale does a significant amount of business [disclaimer]I believe[/disclaimer] supplying embedded PPC processors to the communications industry. Stuff like this helps to make optical fiber connection cheaper and faster. The Freescale involvement means that the photonic-to-electronic chips get a cost-effective integration with the electronic logic in the router.
Maybe eventually, we'll see direct fiber communications connecting to our home PCs, at commodity prices, through speci
buzzword of this article (Score:2)
Re:buzzword of this article (Score:2)
Truthfully, I'd love to see optical processor technology, but I don't think we're ready. But if this company can provide, then I will consume
Re:buzzword of this article (Score:2)
Whose bright idea was it... (Score:2, Funny)
Imagine Intel chips with this technology. Now instead of heating your whole room - you have an extremely bright night light. "Sleep" or "hibernate" will have a new meaning when you use it to turn off the main light in your room.
Re:Whose bright idea was it... (Score:2)
Light pollution == inefficiency (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Whose bright idea was it... (Score:2)
Not a "Processor" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a "Processor" (Score:2)
Re:Not a "Processor" [winhat] (Score:2, Funny)
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the nature in which ramanujan was referred to as "indian math guy" in the sense of optical logic.
10Ghz? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10Ghz? (Score:2, Informative)
The performance gain is up to the chip designers, who will design a chip as fast as they can. That wasn't the problem they were trying to solve.
Rather, the problem this addresses is off-chip interconnect. Today chips communicate with the rest of the system via solder joints; this provides for very limited bandwidths, far far less than 10 Giga items per second. This is mostly because process improvements that have allowed us to shrink our chips have not allowed us to sh
solution for wiring problem? (Score:5, Informative)
A major problem as CMOS processes get smaller and smaller is wires and wiring. Its really bad at 90nm and it looks like its going to be way worse at 65nm.
Even if optical interconnects can just be used for long intra-unit busses (think L1 cache to fetch/decode unit, and there to integer unit and float unit, etc) we could see great performance gains.
Something like when the upper metal layers in CMOS went to copper a few years ago.
Re:solution for wiring problem? (Score:2)
65nm wiring is really slow. What we're seeing from TSMC is still bouncing around a bit for 65nm low power, but wires are slower than we were hoping.
It looks as though people won't switch to 65nm because 65nm produces faster devices, instead people will go to 65nm for cost and capacity.
Re:10Ghz? (Score:2)
Multiple channels of optical in one fiber (Score:2)
By loosing the restrictions imposed by the PCB, it should also be possible to have much more ingenious designs. What this tech could do for SMP alone is staggering in it's implication
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
minus the omniture spyware tracking and massive banners
________
Startup Luxtera has announced its plans to enter the CMOS photonics market, anticipating the day when microprocessors will transmit information via light, not electrons.
The company claims that its optical modulator for transforming electrons into photons runs at 10-GHz, ten times the speed of an optical modulator Intel Corp. researchers began talking about last year. Beginning in mid-2006, Luxtera hopes to enter production of photonic devices using standard CMOS manufacturing processes. ADVERTISEMENT
Although the majority of chip-to-chip communications are conducted using copper-based interconnects, researchers are already looking toward the day when the balance shifts toward optical transmissions, initially for chip-to-chip interfaces between microprocessors, or between a microprocessor and memory device. Fibre optics are a standard component of modern telecommunication infrastructures, and interfaces such as Fibre Channel also use optical fibre interconnects to link up devices.
Although light slows down by some degree when transmitted through an optical medium, shifting to optical-based components is still too expensive than relying solely on copper, even when factoring in the additional power, heat, and crosstalk issues.
"The problem here that we can solve is a matter of bandwidth," said Gabriele Sartori, Luxtera's vice president of marketing and a former advocate for the HyperTransport protocol developed by Advanced Micro Devices.
Part of the relatively high cost of photonics comes from the fact that converting electrons to photons requires an intermediary device, such as the modulator Luxtera is designing. Today, that device exists as a separate module. Intel, Luxtera, and others are trying to integrate the optical waveguides within standard CMOS processes, that can be controlled by the standard voltage swings of a microprocessor.
However, doing so requires that the optical vendor have close ties to a microprocessor manufacturer. At Intel, that's no problem. Luxtera, on the other hand, has worked closely with Freescale Semiconductor to develop the technology. Finding a partner like Freescale is "necessary," Sartori said. "You must walk before you can run."
Freescale has taped out several engineering samples of the optical technology, including a chip, one side of which includes the optical interface built in. The sample chip use a 130-nm SOI process, the same technology used to fabricate the G4 microprocessor. Part of Luxtera's job has been to develop silicon libraries, the files used to design the photonic chips in the same way other libraries serve as the blueprint for making more conventional semiconductors.
The 32-employee startup originally received $7 million funding from Sevin Rosen Funds and August Capital in 2001, followed by an additional $15 million by New Enterprise Associates in 2003. Eli Yablonovitch, a professor at UCLA who developed photoelectronic crystals, sits on the company's board, while Arno Penzias, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on the Big Bang theory, serves in an advisory role. Other board members include Andy Rappaport of August Capital, which funded Transmeta, among others.
IBM, better info (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM is working in this area also [ibm.com] . . .
Will be interesting to see a PowerPC with the guts of the VMX unit running at 10Ghz . . .
Re:d'oh. (Score:1)
pfth.
But.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Also, while I'm here...
Imagine a Beowulf.....
In Soviet Russia photons....
3 PROFT!!
Only old people use photons....
Re:But.... (Score:2)
Re:But.... (Score:2)
More detailed article at Forbes (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly, the 10Ghz figure comes from a measurement made a researcher at Sun Labs, who have been working with Luxtera for more than a year now. The article also talks about what other companies such as Intel and IBM are up to.
FYI Freescale=Motorola (Score:5, Informative)
Just thought I'd clear up that potential confusion...
Re:FYI Freescale=Motorola (Score:2)
So Freescale != Motorola. :-) Actually, I used to work at Motorola, and owned some stock. I recently heard about the spinoff by receiving some shares of Freescale. Go Freescale!!
1. Work at a company where innovation moves at the speed of a glacier.
2. Purchase stock while working there, watch it decrease in value by 75%.
3. Receive stock in spinoff comp
Optical interconnects (Score:5, Informative)
Other groups working on optical interconnects: (incomplete list)
Heriot Watt [hw.ac.uk]
Cornell University [cornell.edu]
IBM Zurich [ibm.com]
Delft [tudelft.nl]
UIUC [uiuc.edu]
Intel [intel.com]
Stanford [stanford.edu]
Interesting, But... (Score:2)
maybe someone smarter than I can.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, I am down with light based switching mechanisms and all that. But in my mind, I'm wondering how registers are "storing" information. Light, to my knowledge, cannot be effectively stored. I recall from a couple of years ago someone attempting to make progress in that area but I don't recall hearing that they were successful.
I guess it's time for me to go back to school on this new technology 'cause I *just* don't understand it. Anyone who does understand it care to spit out a few paragraphs to summarize how it works assuming the reader already understands the basics of digital electronics?
Re:maybe someone smarter than I can.... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not an issue here, from what I can tell. The 10 GHz number is modulating light to electrical signals. All the actual storage and processing will be done just as before; you still have your Flip Flops and storing the bits. The only difference here is that instead of copper interconnects, we use light pulses. The benefit of this new technology is that it can be done with normal CMOS fabrication techniques.
Anyone with more experience with this stuff is free to correct/clarify.
Re:maybe someone smarter than I can.... (Score:2)
New meaning to deeply pipelined architectures (Score:4, Informative)
Its always interesting to see what happens when the relative speeds of processor, memory, and interconnects change.
Perfect! (Score:5, Funny)
Now when I find a bug in my code I can just reconfigure the photonic matrix and reverse the polarity of the power coupling.
And if that doesn't work I'll try modulating the field harmonics.
This can really save me in a tight situation.
Robert
Re:Perfect! (Score:2)
Optical Modulator? (Score:3, Funny)
"More light!" (Score:2, Funny)
Slashdot mislead (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article carefully (which is laced with marketing hype and was obviously written by someone only passingly familiar with the technologies involved), you will see that nobody's promising optical cpu's in 2006. In anticipation of future optical chips and other technologies, Intel has begun developing one of the stepping stones toward this technological era, which is an optical/electrical gateway of sorts which can be built on a standard electrical chip to allow it to interface with optical components. Think a modern cpu, with some low level optical/eletrical interface on the edge of it so that a row of optical "pins" can stick out one side in addition to the normal electrical pins on the bottom.
This little startup company is working on the same thing, and hopes to have it out soon. Their marketing article is trying to build hype so they can get more cash. Nobody will be selling anyone an all-optical cpu in 2006 (or 2007, or 2008, etc).
I can hear it now ... (Score:2, Funny)
Just a modulator (Score:5, Interesting)
The company claims that its optical modulator for transforming electrons into photons runs at 10-GHz
I may not have a Nobel Prize, but I do have a Ph.D. in physics. Electrons do not tranform into photons. They may produce photons, but not turn into them.
I see these articles that claim the creation of optical processors. But read the article, and all the researchers have to do is add a silicon processor and BOOM, we have an optical processor. It's not that easy.
I remember the researcher who created an optical computer that was the size of a room. Why is this? Electrons are small. They bend around corners. They stay put. They move when you want them to. Photons do not bend well around small corners, do not support CMOS-like circuits and generally fail at most tasks of that versatile, tiny doer of great deeds, the electron.
As usual, it's just an optical modulator. Boring old modulator.
Re:Just a modulator (Score:2)
And while this tech can't be used to create an optical pr
Cool (Score:2)
What does this _mean_? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me or is this a really badly constructed sentence? It changes subject halfway through (from the speed of light in optical medium to the cost of copper).
Modulator, Schmodulator.... (Score:2)
Smaller chips? Less solder? (Score:2)
And since an optical interconnect wouldn't need solder, these chips would need a completely different process for connection to a circuit boa
Electrical What? (Score:2)
Bah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh brother when will they ever learn (Score:2)
Re:The Japanese... (Score:2)
Re:History (Score:2)
Re:History (Score:2)
I know he was but he was linking commercialization to R&D. I'm telling him and you that you're full of shit.
Re:History (Score:2)
nope (Score:2)
Hey, we all came from somewhere else. It's the country, not the ethnicity that's making the difference.
Actually, no. America's vast capital reserves and efficient capital markets have allowed it to dominate R&D for the last 50 years. Russia and China have produced a huge amount of innovative and inventive research, but lack the virtuous, steal, innovate, capitalise, commercialise, rinse, repeat cycle that America excels (excelled?) at.
Hand in glove. A
Re:Seeing is believing (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah because companies are always promising more processing power, but they never deliver!!
Re:The obligatory ... (Score:2)
Nope. They're using beams of light, but Quake uses shadow mapping.