[Veedrac]

> all-optical computing

The keyword here is ‘all’. There are some things optical computing is bad at. However there are some things it is unparalleled at. For example, light can multiplex. It can have much lower energy losses. It can run at much higher frequencies. It is by far the best way to transmit information at extremely high data rates. Even within a chip, free space optical communication has massive theoretical potential.

Your comment would have been an excellent one without the last sentence.

[coldtea]

But the whole wisdom of the parent comment is in the last sentence. This is mostly what is happening with such papers.

The keyword here might be "all", and there are some applications where optical computing is unparalled at. But research teams, vendors, and the media spin those things are a recplament for every application, not as some niche thing that's good at some niche applications that most people need not care about...

[kllrnohj]

There seems to be an awfully large amount of projection here from people seemingly just reading the headline and not the article (much less the paper).

Even just the article's sub-title has tempered predictions: "“Optical accelerator” devices could one day soon turbocharge tailored applications"

And the research has immediate practical applications, again per the article:

> "The most surprising finding was that we could trigger the optical switch with the smallest amount of light, a single photon," says study senior author Pavlos Lagoudakis, [..] Lagoudakis says the super-sensitivity of the new optical switch to light suggests it could serve as a light detector that could find use in lidar scanners, such as those finding use in drones and autonomous vehicles.

[lostmsu]

To me it sounds like the counterargument nulls the wisdom. If you can only make 200nm optical nodes, but they could multiplex 1M signals, you'd win by 100x over 2nm electrical nodes. It will be 100_000x if you add 10THz vs 10GHz difference to the picture.

[amelius]

You are right about transmission of data. But the article is about transistors, i.e. processing of data.