It’s a bright day for computing — literally.
Two tech companies have unveiled computer components that use laser light to process information. These futuristic processors could soon solve specific real-world problems faster and with lower energy requirements than conventional computers. The announcements, published separately April 9 in Nature, mark a major leap forward for this alternative approach to computing.
Lightelligence, based in Boston, and Lightmatter, in Mountain View, Calif., have shown that light-based, or photonic, components “can do things that we care about, and that they can do them better than electronic chips that we already have,” says Anthony Rizzo, a photonics engineer at Dartmouth College who was not involved in either study.
Lasers already zap data across the world via fiber optic cables, and photonics plays a role in moving data in advanced data centers. In March, for example, tech company NVIDIA, based in Santa Clara, Calif., announced new technology that uses light to communicate between devices. But, Rizzo says, these light beams don’t compute anything. Inside a conventional computer, incoming light signals are transformed into slower electronic 1s and 0s that move through tiny transistors.
In contrast, light inside the Lightmatter and Lightelligence devices “is actually doing math,” Rizzo says. Specifically, both use light to perform matrix multiplication, a fundamental operation in most AI processing as well as other areas of computing. In both new devices, all other calculations occur in electronic components.
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