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The
mantra of our electronic age has been 'faster, smaller, better' for over two decades
now. Today, computer lies at the very core of our society. As we try to squeeze
more from a silver of silicon, the cost of chip making has become prohibitively
expensive. Chip barriers are now down to three or four atoms apart. So far the
ride has been good, but at some point, something has to give.
At that point,
incremental approach to silicon technology would not be enough - we will need
a new approach. Many new technologies abound, but the most promising among them
is the use of light.
An Optical Computer is a hypothetical device that uses
visible light or infrared beams, rather than electric current, to perform digital
computations.
An electric current flows at only about 10 percent of speed
of light. By applying some of the advantages of visible and/or IR networks at
the device and component scale, a computer can be developed that can perform operations
very much times faster than a conventional electronic computer.
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