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Over the past decades, computers have become faster and faster and hard disks and storage chips have reached enormous capacities. But this trend cannot continue forever: we are already running up against physical limits that will prevent silicon-based computer technology from attaining any impressive speed gains from this point on. Researchers are particularly optimistic that the next era of technological advancements will start with the development of novel information-processing materials and technologies that combine electrical circuits with optical ones. Using short laser pulses, a research team led by Misha Ivanov of the Max Born Institute in Berlin together with scientists from the Russian Quantum Center in Moscow have now shed light on the extremely rapid processes taking place within these novel materials. Their results have appeared in the journal Nature Photonics.
Of particular interest for modern material research in solid state physics are "strongly correlated systems," so called for the strong interactions between the electrons in these materials. Magnets are a good example of this: the electrons in magnets align themselves in a preferred direction of spin inside the material, and it is this that produces the magnetic field. But there are other, entirely different structural orders that deserve attention. In so-called Mott insulators for example, a class of materials now being intensively researched, the electrons ought to flow freely and the materials should therefore be able to conduct electricity as well as metals. But the mutual interaction between electrons in these strongly correlated materials impedes their flow and so the materials behave as insulators instead.
By disrupting this order with a strong laser pulse, the physical properties can be made to change dramatically. This can be likened to a phase transition from solid to liquid: as ice melts, for example, rigid ice crystals transform into free-flowing water molecules. Very similarly, the electrons in a strongly correlated material become free to flow when an external laser pulse forces a phase transition in their structural order. Such phase transitions should allow us to develop entirely new switching elements for next-generation electronics that are faster and potentially more energy efficient than present-day transistors. In theory, computers could be made around a thousand times faster by "turbo-charging" their electrical components with light pulses.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 18 2018, @01:49PM (3 children)
Photonics or some novel material increases clock speeds to THz levels.
The new thermal properties from the above allow cores to be stacked and operating without melting the chip. Thousands or tens of thousands of cores appear where there were 4-18 before.
Such a scenario would be good for both single-threaded and multi-threaded code.
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(Score: 2, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:22PM
We truly live in the age of computer. The age of cyber. It's replaced our security guards (not my terrific Secret Service). It's about to replace our drivers (great job, Uber!). The guys in the warehouse can't stop for a piss, because they're competing with cyber. The cyber porn is starting -- no actor, no actress, all cyber. Digital. And more and more people getting EMAIL, all the young kids have EMAIL now. It's a whole new world. Amazing!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:26PM (1 child)
We can't make computers much faster; we simply can't make the vacuum tubes much smaller!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:43PM
Funny you should mention that. Nanoscale "vacuum tubes" have been proposed as a successor to silicon transistors:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/introducing-the-vacuum-transistor-a-device-made-of-nothing [ieee.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoscale_vacuum-channel_transistor [wikipedia.org]
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