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Optical Computing: The End of Electron-Based Computing

Optical computing uses photons instead of electrons for computation. Photons can represent data and are generated using diodes or lasers. Photon-based transistors can be much smaller than electron-based ones, allowing for greater computing power. While electrons have limitations due to size, heat, and speed, photons travel at the speed of light and do not interact with each other, enabling multiplexing of multiple data streams on a single channel. Current research aims to develop optical logic gates and circuits to allow fully optical computers without conversion between light and electricity. These would offer benefits like higher speeds, lower power use, and the ability to scale down in size.

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61 views3 pages

Optical Computing: The End of Electron-Based Computing

Optical computing uses photons instead of electrons for computation. Photons can represent data and are generated using diodes or lasers. Photon-based transistors can be much smaller than electron-based ones, allowing for greater computing power. While electrons have limitations due to size, heat, and speed, photons travel at the speed of light and do not interact with each other, enabling multiplexing of multiple data streams on a single channel. Current research aims to develop optical logic gates and circuits to allow fully optical computers without conversion between light and electricity. These would offer benefits like higher speeds, lower power use, and the ability to scale down in size.

Uploaded by

TRIAD TECHNO SERVICES
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Optical Computing

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Optical computing is the use of photons in computation. Photons, effectively massless and incredibly fast, are generated
using diodes or lasers. The photons take the place of electrons in more traditional computers and are used to represent the
flow of data. Lacking the size limitation of electrons, photon based transistors can be incredibly small which increases
potential computing power.

Introduction
Computers function using on or off states called bits. These bits are traditionally written as ones and
zeroes and are stored in a computer's memory in a transistor (Figure 1). A single transistor can be
used thousands or millions of times per second but can only handle one piece of information during
each use. Limitations on time and speed of transistors are determined by heat generation and
charging/discharging the wire (usually copper) connected to the transistor. A grouping of eight bits can represent up to 256
possibilities and is the base size when referring to capacity of digital storage. The more complex the data the more bits, or
transistors, are required to represent it. As more transistors are placed on a chip the amount of data that can be processed as
well as the heat generated increases.

Photons can be many different wavelengths (Figure 2), corresponding to different energies and frequencies. Electrons in
relatively small band gap materials, generally semiconductors, can be excited by photons of larger energies, which vibrate
and release photons of their own, propagating a light wave through the material. Generally, some portion of the wave is
reflected and another portion is absorbed, so perfect transmittance is unlikely and results in energy loss. The thicker the
material or the larger its extinction coefficient the quicker energy is lost while passing through it. The amount of light
reflected is dependent on the angle of incidence and the reflection coefficients of the mediums across the interface where
light is crossing. This relationship is modeled using the Fresnel Equations. Each set of mediums with different reflection
coefficients will have a critical angle where total reflection is achieved. This effect preserves all energy and is used in fiber
optic cables today.
Figure 3). Plasmonic nanoparticles may be chained together, allowing the transmission of particular frequencies of light
around corners.
Lasers are coherent monochromatic beams of light emitted by excited populations of atoms. The atoms
are trapped between two mirrors, one with 100% reflectivity and the other ~98%, and then stimulated in a
process called photon pumping (Figure 4). When an electron absorbs the energy of a photon it can be
raised in energy to its excited or higher energy state. The relaxation process is exactly the reverse, where
an excited electron relaxes to its normal state and emits a photon with energy equal to the difference in
states. Photons perpendicular to the mirrors are trapped and sent back toward the atom population. When
a population of atoms, be them in a solid, liquid, or gas, are excited and emitting a cascade of illumination is set up where
they are then exciting one another. The atoms are soon largely excited and a population inversion takes place, where most
or all of the atoms are emitting into one another and the ~2% loss is sent out as a laser. This difference is both coherent and
monochromatic, meaning that all photons are of the same polarity and wavelength.
LED's, or light-emitting diodes, are pn junctions made of extrinsic semiconducting materials. When a voltage equal to or
greater than the material's band gap a photon is released. Each band gap corresponds with a single wavelength of light.
Laser LED's can emit coherent light, but this is not the case for most LED's.

The End of Electron-Based Computing


In 1954 the first silicon transistor was comparable in size to a US postage stamp. In 1965 co-founder of Intel, Gordon
Moore, predicted the number of transistors fitting onto a chip doubling every two years. This prediction was later called
Moore's Law and was very accurate up through the beginning of the 21st century (Figure 5). While the exponential growth
predicted hasn't stopped completely it has slowed down. Today silicon transistors rapidly approach ~10nm across, the

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theoretical minimum size for electron-based computing. This limitation is due to
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the quantum nature of electrons, where the electron can simply tunnel through the
transistor as if it weren't there. The 5nm minimum size imposes a maximum
number of transistors and maximum speed of computation. This limitation can be
mitigated by parallel processing, or multiple processors running in tandem, but
this in turn generates more heat and is difficult to program for. Current chips are
made with a two dimensional model, they could be made three dimensional to
increase possible number of transistors but this increases cooling problems
(cooling is related to surface area, a cube has much less than a chip of similar
volume), power consumption, as well as tunneling issues as before.
Another fundamental limitation of electron based computing is the use of
electrons. In addition to quantum tunneling they travel relatively slowly. A
material's drift velocity is the speed at which electrons move in a wire. Silicon's
drift velocity depends on temperature, doping, and applied current, but tops out in the range of 107 cm/s for undoped
silicon. This figure is slightly misleading in that one does not need the original electron sent to arrive at a destination, but
the electron that your sent electron smashed into and catapulted forward many times over. This propagation wave is
approximately the speed of light. The major slowdown of electron use comes from the necessity of charging/discharging
the transistors and their connections. The minimum time for this action is in the realm of nanoseconds.

Mechanisms and Advantages of Optical Computing


Photons, be them generated by lasers, LED's, or some other means, can be used
to encode for data the same as electrons today. Optical transistors are slowly
being designed and implemented which will eventually allow for an entirely
optical computer. Optical transistors of several designs are being experimented
with. A simple polarizing screen that turns ninety degrees will effectively shut
off a beam of light. Dielectrics are materials that can become polarizers when
an electric current is applied and have been used as optical transistors. Optical
logic gates (Figure 6) are more difficult but are fundamentally possible. They
would use multiple beams, one control, one or more to be computed, and would
result in a logical output.
Electrons have one advantage in that copper wires or silicon channels can turn and the electrons will follow. To emulate
this effect optical chips may consist of plasmonic nanoparticles to turn corners and continue their use without significant
loss of power or conversion into electrons.
Optical computing has several advantages over traditional electron-based computing. Photons of
different wavelengths do not interact with one another, so when a laser of wavelength A is used to
encode information A, it can be superimposed with laser of wavelength B, C, D and so on. This
layering, known as multiplexing (Figure 7) in fiber optics, allows simultaneous data flow across a
single channel, a significant improvement over copper wires. The speed of light in a vacuum is
3x10^8 m/s, roughly equivalent to electric propagation through a wire. Optical transistors, unlike electron-based ones, can
re-cycle roughly every picosecond, or one thousand times faster than an electron based transistor. While passing through a
chip coherent light of the correct wavelength does not release heat or consume energy. One major hurtle is that, due to the
enormous speed of photons, it can be difficult to pin down exactly where that photon is located. Photons do not quantum
tunnel, so as techniques and technologies improve optical transistors may be as small as we can make them.

Optical Computing Today and Tomorrow


There is currently a large push to enable optical computing using the same techniques as used with silicon today. This
would allow the use of today's production facilities to create the computers of tomorrow. One of the leaders in this push is
Intel, the creater's of an integrated silicon photonics link which can transmit fifty gigibits per second (at 12.5 Gbit/sec per
wavelength using 4 multiplexed wavelengths) of uncorrupted information. This is an electrical to optical to electrical
translation device, so is a stepping stone to full optical computing. In 2013 Carolyn Ross, a professor at MIT, announced

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progress toward an all optical chip where photons did not need to be translated into electrons for processing on a silicon
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based chip. This chip treated each photon as a bit of information, reducing power consumption and heat generation.
In the not too distant future fully optical computers will be realized. These computers will only use electricity to power
LED's, diodes, or laser emitters, using

Questions
1. What is the minimum size of an electron-based transistor? Why?
2. What is the difference in speed of an electron in silicon to light in a vacuum? What effect does this speed difference
have?
3. What limits the speed of electron-based transistors?

Answers
1. Around 10 nm. When transistors fall below this minimum size electrons can tunnel past them. This is called quantum
tunneling.
2. Light is 2.8E8 times faster. Effectively none, electricity propagates at approximately the speed of light.
3. The charging and discharging of the transistors and their wire connections.

References
1. Hummel, Rolf E. Electronic Properties of Materials: An Introduction for Engineers. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1985.
Print.
2. www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/...commercial.htm

Contributors
Allen Volpe (University of California, Davis)

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