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posted by janrinok on Monday May 07 2018, @03:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the another-bright-idea dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

A team of researchers in Germany and at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how infrared laser pulses can shift electrons between two different states, the classic 1 and 0, in a thin sheet of semiconductor

"Ordinary electronics are in the range of gigahertz, one billion operations per second. This method is a million times faster," said Mackillo Kira, U-M professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

He led the theoretical part of the study, to be published in the journal Nature, collaborating with physicists at the University of Marburg in Germany. The experiment was done at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

[... Quantum computer] qubits are hard to make because quantum states are extremely fragile. The main commercial route, pursued by companies such as Intel, IBM, Microsoft and D-Wave, uses superconducting circuits—loops of wire cooled to extremely cold temperatures (-321°F or less), at which the electrons stop colliding with each other and instead form shared quantum states through a phenomenon known as coherence.

Rather than finding a way to hang onto a quantum state for a long time, the new study demonstrates a way to do the processing before the states fall apart.

"In the long run, we see a realistic chance of introducing quantum information devices that perform operations faster than a single oscillation of a lightwave," said Rupert Huber, professor of physics at the University of Regensburg, who led the experiment. "The material is relatively easy to make, it works in room temperature air, and at just a few atoms thick, it is maximally compact."

Source: http://www.opli.net/opli_magazine/eo/2018/light-could-make-semiconductor-computers-a-million-times-faster-or-even-go-quantum-may-news/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @07:17AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @07:17AM (#676569)

    Just to be clear: using light for data transmission doesn't buy you much: electrical signals already travel at around 1/3 C, and multi-GHz chips already run into limits in transmission speed. The clock on one side of your chip is not in sync with the clock on the other side, and sending signals back and forth... I haven't done chip design since the MHz days, but it must be something of a black art, to get this right.

    What TFA is going on about is switching speed. How fast can a transistor or gate change states? It takes a certain number of electrons, and a certain amount of time to accumulate them. Higher curren gives you faster switching - but at the expense of higher power and more heat. If the authors have identified a potential mechanism that does not require so much time ("a single oscillation of a lightwave), that would be a huge benefit. But, there are two reality checks: (1) Transmission of light signals remains limited by C, and will not be significantly faster. (2) More importantly: Where does the light come from? You need chaining: a change of state in one gate leads to a change of state in the next. If they need light to trigger a state change, then they need each gate to generate a new light signal to trigger the change in the next gate. How fast will that process be?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @08:48AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @08:48AM (#676583)

    How fast will that process be?

    About a blink of the remaining eye.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @03:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @03:47PM (#676672)

      "Spock! Don't stare into that chip!..."

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 07 2018, @02:57PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday May 07 2018, @02:57PM (#676659) Journal

    You could get more transmission speed by sending more photons at once.

    https://www.photonics.com/a56076/Frequency_Combs_Speed_Up_Data_Transmission [photonics.com]

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