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[IbizaPocholo]

Four months ago I interviewed Lightmatter CEO Nick Harris on his photonic supercomputer. There are now almost 400K views and 2,600 comments ... with lots of questions. In this episode, Harris answers the biggest ones.

- is this real?
- does the chip do what Lightmatter says it will do?
- RGB vs CMYK?
- how do you do linear algebra with light?
- where can I get this?
- capacitance issues
- can it run DOOM?
- can it run Crysis?
- why hasn't NVIDIA done this already?
- how does this interface with quantum computing?

... and much more.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Will be interesting to see what the future holds

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

This is really interesting as a subject but both the videos in the OP are damn near useless in providing any meaningful technical information on how this optical processor actually works.

 

[Chris_Rivera]

We certainly need a breakthrough in processor tech. The current tech is great, but it’s built more around product cycles than anythin.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

In Spanish... What is This?

 

[PC Gamer]

There are some disagreements between researchers about the future capabilities of optical computers; whether or not they may be able to compete with semiconductor-based electronic computers in terms of speed, power consumption, cost, and size is an open question.

Critics note that real-world logic systems require "logic-level restoration, cascadability, fan-out and input–output isolation", all of which are currently provided by electronic transistors at low cost, low power, and high speed.

For optical logic to be competitive beyond a few niche applications, major breakthroughs in non-linear optical device technology would be required, or perhaps a change in the nature of computing.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

In Spanish... What is This?

 

[RoadHazard]

This has nothing to do with gaming, and won't for a long time (if ever), but it is pretty cool.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

There are some disagreements between researchers about the future capabilities of optical computers; whether or not they may be able to compete with semiconductor-based electronic computers in terms of speed, power consumption, cost, and size is an open question.

Critics note that real-world logic systems require "logic-level restoration, cascadability, fan-out and input–output isolation", all of which are currently provided by electronic transistors at low cost, low power, and high speed.

For optical logic to be competitive beyond a few niche applications, major breakthroughs in non-linear optical device technology would be required, or perhaps a change in the nature of computing.

Bingo!

Photonic computing requires a fundamental paradigm shift in computing at the very conceptual level. You can't just apply the same principles of how semi-conductor-based microprocessors are designed to a device based on photonic logic circuits and then expect it to be competitive.

The real benefits of photonic computing are in computing data in flight, rather than the traditional computing device model.