New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity

New CMOS chip can process both light and electricity(arstechnica.com)

45 points by highsea 10 years ago | 7 comments

legulere 10 years ago |

> The processor itself is a dual core RISC-V, an architecture used in academic circles; it's capable of operating in the gigahertz range.

It's nice to see RISC-V getting adopted more and more. I wonder how long it will take until I will own a product with one or more RISC-V processors.

_chris_ 10 years ago | |

This paper uses the open-source Rocket-chip processor (https://github.com/ucb-bar/rocket-chip), which is the same processor being used (and modified) by lowRISC. So hopefully you can buy RISC-V in the not-to-distant future!

justifier 10 years ago |

    Moving data around inside a computer means shoving it 
    through wires, which have inherent bandwidth 
    limitations and produce a lot of heat. Once that data     
    hits a network, however, it often runs across optical 
    hardware, which can send information long distances 
    at high bandwidth without needing a dedicated nuclear 
    reactor for power.

is the goal reduced power consumption?

_chris_ 10 years ago | |

It's both increased bandwidth and lower energy. It'd be useless if it blew the thermal budget to achieve the higher bandwidth.

justifier 10 years ago | | |

can you explain the mechanism for the bandwidth increase?

do the photovoltaics act as logic gates? doing calculations?

if the mechanism that is controlling the optics is electric:both transmitting and receiving; it would seem the throughput would be the same as pure electric

i understand fiber optic because light will travel a longer distance faster than an electric field propagated through wire, but these chips are built using atomic scale welding techniques(i)

(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4&feature=youtu.be...

PascLeRasc 10 years ago |

I appreciated the 12:36 AM time in the video - most researchers I know seem to work best after 10 at night.

williamjennings 10 years ago |

Here is the Nature paper:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16454

Moving data around inside a computer means shoving it through wires, which have inherent bandwidth limitations and produce a lot of heat. Once that data hits a network, however, it often runs across optical hardware, which can send information long distances at high bandwidth without needing a dedicated nuclear reactor for power.