Tuesday, February 5, 2008

News: Laser Light Switch

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 - A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to switch a beam of laser light on and off up to 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry. (Read More)

This means that there will be a way to make light based computers and networks. The possibility to run multiple computers together at a speed that would seem like it's one machine. There are systems of arrays set up with multiple computers that share processing power. Imagine if the network and communication in the machine were all based on light. This would change the way computers work all together. It reminds me of the nervous system where you have impulses that are electrical until they reach the synapse and are converted to chemical and back again. I wonder how light will be converted into a storage medium. I'm sure they have implemented a procedure but I wonder if there is something more efficient. Right now you can get a network that runs on fiber optics. I think we need to move this inside the machine and this is what this article is all about.

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