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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

As the cost of sequencing a person’s genome plummets [technologyreview.com], demand for the computing power needed to make sense of the genetic information is growing. Nicholas New hopes some of it will be worked on by a processor that parses data using laser light [technologyreview.com], built by his U.K. startup, Optalysys [optalysys.com].

New says his company’s exotic approach to crunching data can dramatically upgrade a conventional computer by taking over some of the most demanding work in applications such as genomics and simulating weather. “The grunt work can be done by the optics,” he says.

Researchers have worked on the idea of using optics rather than electronics to process data for decades, with little commercial traction. But New argues that it is now needed because manufacturers such as Intel admit that they can’t keep improving conventional chips at the pace they used to

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