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Why future supercomputing requires optics

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 261–263 (2010)Cite this article

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Could optical technology offer a solution to the heat generation and bandwidth limitations that the computing industry is starting to face? The benefits of energy-efficient passive components, low crosstalk and parallel processing suggest that the answer may be yes.

There are points in time at which a well-known technology, which has been used and gradually improved for decades, reaches its physical limitations, forcing a shift towards dramatically different technology. Automobiles, television, computers, photography and communication are all domains in which such shifts have occurred. The point at which these massive shifts in technology occur is often decades after the initial invention and often requires substantial investment.

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Figure 1: The Stanford Vector Matrix Multiplier.
Figure 2: The concept of 'zero-energy' logic gates using optical passive elements.
Figure 3: Architecture for solving Hamiltonian path problem.

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Acknowledgements

We thank William Green, Shaya Fainman, Joseph Rosen, Nati Shaked and Hen Fitoussi for helpful inputs.

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Author notes

  1. Shlomi Dolev is at the Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. dolev@cs.bgu.ac.il

Authors and Affiliations

  1. John Caulfield is in the physics department at Fisk University, 1000 17th Avenue, North Nashville, Tennessee 37208, USA hjc@fisk.edu,

    H. John Caulfield & Shlomi Dolev

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  1. H. John Caulfield
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Caulfield, H., Dolev, S. Why future supercomputing requires optics. Nature Photon 4, 261–263 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.94

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