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Mr. Luddite

On 4/1/2014 3:27 PM, Poquito Loco wrote:
On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 13:37:57 -0400, wrote:

On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 13:22:24 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/1/2014 12:45 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:00:08 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/1/2014 11:38 AM, wrote:

You are still hitting the wall.
Regular chips are about tapped out.
We are rapidly approaching the point that we will be super cooling
processors to get quantum effects.
There is only so much you can do to shorten the data path.
They are just making them wider. (multiple processors, wider buses)

Ummm ... I don't claim to be a semiconductor manufacturing expert nor
have a lot of experience in wafer fab but there are companies investing
a lot of research money into the optical replacement of copper tracing
of single, double and multi-level boards. The focus ( no pun intended)
is on reducing size and complexity. Not sure what gains in overall
processing speeds are achieved although claims are made that it will.

These are tiny, pin head sized laser diodes. The cool thing is that the
light paths can intersect others with no interference or "shorts".

I have read about it in the trade rags. It still seems to have the
intent of making shorter and marginality faster data paths.
When you are splitting hairs on the speed of light vs electrons on
copper, in a chunk of real estate the size of your thumbnail, there is
not much more speed to be had.
Now when they get this quantum computing thing going, they are off to
the races again. I doubt you will have that on your desk anytime soon.

The available bandwidth of an optical system is orders of magnitude
greater than that of copper conductors. Hence, more data can be moved
faster simultaneously.

AKA a wider data path. ;-)

Well...that *was* a bit funny!

It has absolutely nothing to do with the physical size of the "path",
copper or laser beam.