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From: rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: optical computing
Message-ID: <4560@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 16 Aug 89 22:43:26 GMT
Sender: USENET News System <news@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini)
Organization: Stanford University, Dept. of Geophysics
Lines: 10


Optical computing is where the data bus, memory, and-or arithmetic units
use light.  Telecommuncation companies and some military computing systems
already use optical data buses.  Optical disks can be considered one type
of optical memory.  Others are continuously circulating delay lines.
You can put trillions of bits on delay lines and off-load them quickly.
Most university research concerns arithmetic units.  Such use optical switches
that are very fast and can be parallelized thousands to millions together.
There is lots of potential but little actual practice due to competition
with silicon devlopments.