NHacker Next
login
▲Developing first petahertz-speed phototransistor in ambient conditionsnews.arizona.edu
22 points by joak 34 days ago | 5 comments
Loading comments...
robin_reala 30 days ago [-]
Discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44083474
rcostin2k2 30 days ago [-]
Well, Intel announced the first terahertz transistor over two decades ago, but there's still no terahertz processor. I wouldn't hold my breath for a petahertz one anytime soon.
onion2k 30 days ago [-]
I wouldn't hold my breath for a petahertz one anytime soon.

That depends on what you mean by 'processor'. Optical systems are great at linear processing, but terrible at nonlinearity. You wouldn't want an optical processor based CPU to run Doom. Encoding something like an AI model or a codec into an optical processor would be great though.

One Google search later.. Turns out a team have made a photonic tensor processor. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03070-1 So you could have an even fast one of those.

petra 30 days ago [-]
The speed limits are because of the latency of the wires and the issue of heat
k__ 30 days ago [-]
Maybe the new ARM architectures will deliver.