For the last four decades, the electronics industry has been driven by the so-called "Moore's Law," which is not a law, but rather an axiom or observation. In fact, this suggests that the speed and performance of electronic devices approximately double every two years. In fact, tech companies are developing new, faster, smarter and better devices every year.
Moore's Law, as stated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors in a chip doubles approximately every 24 months. As they get smaller, they also become faster and consume less power for operation.
In the technology world, one of the biggest questions of the 21st century is how small can we make transistors? If there is a limit to how small they can become, we could reach a point where we can no longer make smaller, more powerful and more efficient devices. In the US alone, the industry generates more than $ 200 billion in annual revenue. Could it stop growing?
Get close to the limit
At present, companies like Intel are mass-producing 14-nanometer diameter transistors - only 14-times wider than DNA molecules. They are made of silicon, the second most abundant material on our planet. The atomic size of silicon is about 0.2 nanometers.
Today's transistors are about 70 silicon atoms wide, so that the possibility of making them even smaller, even smaller. We are approaching the limit of how small we can make a transistor.
Currently, transistors use electrical signals - electrons that move from one place to another - for communication. But if instead of electricity we could use light that consists of photons, we could make transistors even faster. My work to find ways to integrate light-based processing into existing chips is part of this new effort.
Put light in a chip
A transistor consists of three parts; Think of them as parts of a digital camera. First, information enters the lens that corresponds to the source of a transistor. Then it passes through a channel from the image sensor to the cables in the camera. Finally, the information is stored on the memory card of the camera, which is referred to as the "drain" of the transistor.
Light waves can have different frequencies. maxhurtz
At the moment, all of this happens by moving electrons around. In order to replace the medium of light, we have to move photons instead. Subatomic particles such as electrons and photons move in a wave motion and oscillate up and down, even when moving in one direction. The length of each wave depends on what it goes through.
In silicon, the most efficient wavelength for photons is 1.3 microns. This is very small - a human hair has a diameter of about 100 microns. However, electrons in silicon are even smaller - with wavelengths that are 50 to 1000 times shorter than photons.
This means that the equipment for dealing with photons must be larger than today's devices for handling electrons. So it might seem like it would force us to build larger transistors rather than smaller ones.
However, for two reasons, we could maintain the same size of the chips and provide more processing power, shrink chips at the same power, or possibly both. First, a photonic chip requires only a few light sources, producing photons that can then be directed around the chip with very small lenses and mirrors.
And second, light is much faster than electrons. On average, photons can travel about 20 times faster than electrons in a chip. This means that computers are 20 times faster, a speed increase that would take about 15 years with the current technology.
Photonic chips
Scientists have shown progress towards photonic chips in recent years. A key challenge is to ensure that the new light-based chips are compatible with all existing electronic chips. If we can figure out how to do it, or if we even use light-based transistors to enhance electronics, we can see a significant improvement in performance.
When can I get a laptop or a smartphone with light?
We still have a long way to go before the first consumer device hits the market, and progress needs time. The first transistor was made in 1907 using vacuum tubes that were typically between one and six inches high (on average 100 mm). By 1947, the current transistor type was invented, which is now only 14 nanometers wide, and was 40 microns long (about 3,000 times longer than the current one). And in 1971, the first commercial microprocessor (the powerhouse of all electronic devices) was 1,000 times larger than it was when it first hit the market.
The enormous research effort and related development in the electronics industry is only beginning in the photonic industry. As a result, current electronics can perform tasks that are far more complex than currently best photonic devices. However, in the course of research, the power of light will reach and ultimately exceed the speed of electronics. However long it takes, the future of photonics is promising.
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