[GP] THE FUTURE CALCULATORS WILL BE 20 FASTERS!

[BirSaNN]

They will no longer work with electricity
 

The next generation of computers will be much better than they are now.

In the electronics industry, Moore's Law says that every two years electronic devices double their speed and capacity. Therefore, every 24 months, engineers invent devices that are twice as efficient as before. We know too well that it is true, because today we can buy at a decent price very fast computers, which we did not allow for years ago.

However, there is something that risks limiting soon the amazing development of gadgets. Arnab Hazari, an electrical engineering master at Michigan University, wrote an analysis for Science Alert, presenting the future of this field.

Theoretically, the possibilities of computer development are unlimited, but in reality there are concrete barriers. The speed and capacity of a computer is given by the number and size of the transistors. The smaller and the more they give the machine better performance and less electricity.

But there is a limit below which we can not move the transistors, warns Hazari. The transistors currently used by Intel are only 14 nanometers in diameter. They are already extremely small, only 14 times as large as a DNA molecule. They are made of silicone, and a silicon atom has 0.2 nanometer size. Therefore, it is impossible to greatly reduce the size of these tiny electronic links.

So is it possible that soon we can not make computers much more performing than those that exist now? So slow down the evolution of this industry?

Hazari says the solution is different: to replace the electrical current that passes through light-wave transistors, ie photons. In this way, the transistors will not necessarily become smaller, but will communicate much faster between them, so the computers will be much better. Photons are 20 times faster than electrons from electricity, so computers that will use light waves instead of electricity will be 20 times faster.

So far, research in this area of photonic devices is only at the beginning. But the future belongs to them, Hazari is convinced.