Akhetonics Photonic Computing: 1,000x Faster CPUs (medium.com)

49 pointsby peter_d_sherman3 days ago33 comments

amelius 3 hours ago

So they have some kind of nonlinear material that can make light modulate other light, that they managed to get working at teraherz frequencies?

Sounds incredible, as in: can't believe it.

By the way, isn't Nvidia researching this?

octoberfranklin 3 hours ago

Yes; this material is called "snake oil".

amelius 3 hours ago

Let's see if the investors bite.

wartywhoa23 2 hours ago

Theranos demonstrated that they'll bite at anything.

ziofill 2 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics

Very real stuff (I have a PhD on this)

amelius 2 hours ago

I mean, researchers have been trying for years, what is different now?

Y_Y 2 hours ago

At milliwatt power, and terahertz frequency?

PowerElectronix an hour ago

I guess it's a theoretical limit as in the material can change properties that fast given a fast light signal.

oersted an hour ago

This is the second sentence:

> Nonlinear phenomena become relevant only when the input light is very intense. Typically, in order to observe nonlinear phenomena, an intensity of the electromagnetic field of light larger than 108 V/m (and thus comparable to the atomic electric field of ~1011 V/m) is required.

I don’t know anything about this field. Can you address this point? How close are we to overcoming this in academia?

amelius 40 minutes ago

10^8 V/m, yeah that is quite a lot, 100V per micron or 1MV/cm. Even if it works it's going to have reliability issues, especially since the structures are not going to be perfect.

jurschreuder 2 hours ago

It's just as if he had the brilliant idea to do photonics as an outcast even though there is already a 6" wafer semi-production level fablab being built for it in The Netherlands. There is even a version of TinyTapeout for Photonics.

Y_Y 2 hours ago

What's this photonic Tiny Tapeout?

1e1a 2 hours ago

Finally! This paves the way towards practical BrainF*** execution.

9dev 34 minutes ago

We're all adults here, you can spell out BrainFuck just fine.

himata4113 3 hours ago

This comes up every couple of years, but it hasn't seem to have made any advances since the first time I've seen this.

akifbayram 3 hours ago

The channel's other uploads may be giving us a glimpse into this project's future.

JoshTriplett 3 hours ago

Yup. UFO conspiracies, aliens on the moon, PSI...

12ah5kl 4 hours ago

Interesting topic, unreadable due to sloppification.

yuhmahp 3 hours ago

Now it's a good case to use your own ai to un-sloppify

flecomet an hour ago

"The first thing to understand about Akhetonics’ optical computer is that it’s not one thing yet." Great, that is such a good explanation. Thanks ChatGPT I guess.

dvh 4 hours ago

> Photonics

So also 1000x smaller integration

amelius 3 hours ago

Why?

dvh an hour ago

Light is hundreds of nanometers, smallest "transistor" cannot be much smaller than wavelength.

georgeburdell an hour ago

I didn’t read but I’d also like to point out photonics are 1000x larger than leading edge electronics with minimal path to scaling smaller. I don’t see a free lunch

gchamonlive an hour ago

There ain't no free lunch, but real progress rarely depend on it. It's usually lunch we weren't eating before, or a different way to eat the same lunch but with much more satisfaction.

userbinator 43 minutes ago

Basically the density of early CPUs (1970s), but 1000x faster than those, or current CPUs? Like a 1GHz 6502, or a 1THz 6502? The former is not really better, but the latter might interesting.

Y_Y 2 hours ago

In honour of Akhenaten? Cool.

nekusar an hour ago

References of Akhenaten is making rounds in modern pagan/occult circles as well. The "Law of One" group is really pushing ancient Egyptian 'pyramid power' stuff.

natas 4 hours ago

This has been tried by Cray like 15 years ago and the university of Colorado 11 years ago; there were also other initiatives, all failed.

I'm not excluding that now we have more budget/time/AI to make it work (if it can), I'd just say exercise caution reading this (very AI slop) article (and anything that looks too good to be true)

mbfg 4 hours ago

interesting that it is still 2 bit

kmoser 2 hours ago

Do you mean as opposed to operating in an analog fashion? My guess is because keeping it digital means it is as close a possible to a drop-in replacement for today's electronic digital computers, including all the firmware, OS, and software that has already been written for them.

metalman 3 hours ago

akhetonics-photonic-computing 1000x-faster-cpus, in mice

spwa4 39 minutes ago

If you're looking for the limits of this approach: it's about 1000x faster than electric BUT the individual components have to be way larger (and can't be shrinked down)

... which hopefully means a LOT of fabs will be able to produce these (because a 2nm node makes no sense for this)

It also means this will be incredible for radio chips, interconnects, that sort of thing and will do exactly nothing for the first 20 years for cpu's, never mind gpus.