The first photonic processor to use bias is 300 times faster than current CPUs

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procesador fotonico 1000x600.jpg
procesador fotonico 1000x600.jpg

Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed the first photonic processor that uses the polarization of light to maximize density information storage and computing performance.

Photonics have great advantages over electronics. And it is that light is faster and more functional in large bandwidths. There are multiple research projects underway to use the properties of photonics in computer computing, as they are already used in other fields such as telecommunications and computer networks.

Biased Photonic Processor

To understand this research that has been published in Science Advancesit must be said that the light has an interesting and exploitable property for computation. The different wavelengths of light do not interact with each other and this is used, for example, in fiber optics for communications. Nor do the different polarizations of light interact with each other. Each of them can be used as an independent information channel, which allows information to be stored in multiple channels.

Using this concept, researchers have developed the first photonic processor using polarizations of light. To do this, they have developed an HAD (Hybridized Active Dielectric) nanowire, using a material that exhibits switchable material properties upon illumination by optical pulses. Each nanowire responds selectively to a specific polarization direction, so information can be processed simultaneously using multiple polarizations in different directions.

photonic processor

The development improves density by several orders compared to that of conventional electronic chips. Computing speeds are faster because these nanowires are modulated by optical pulses that work in nanoseconds. The new chip promises to be over 300 times faster and denser than current chips.

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“This is just the beginning of what we would like to see in the future, which is the exploitation of all the degrees of freedom that light offers, including polarization to dramatically parallelize information processing.”, explain the researchers. The project is in a preliminary phase and will still need years of development, but it is attracting interest.

Electronics, photonics and new materials

It must be said that “Moore’s Law” that defined the business strategy in the semiconductor industry, allowed the appearance of the microprocessor and later of the personal computer, was the key to increasing the density and with it the number of transistors and ultimately performance.

Today it is finished because the materials (silicon) and the current techniques do not give for more. And it’s needed to keep increasing performance and also handle features like artificial intelligence and machine learning that require specialized and more advanced hardware than today.

The first photonic processor to use bias is 300 times faster than current CPUs 31

And if we can’t increase the number of transistors at the necessary rate, how to pack more functionalities in each of them?. Projects like this photonic processor, which takes advantage of the polarization characteristic of light, may be the answer.