Communications of the ACM
Electro-Optical Device Provides Solution to Faster, More Energy-Efficient Computing Memories, Processors
Researchers at the universities of Exeter and Oxford in the U.K., along with colleagues at Germany's University of Munster, have developed an electro-optical device that bridges the fields of optical and electronic computing.
Credit: University of Exeter (U.K.)
Researchers at the universities of Exeter and Oxford in the U.K., along with colleagues at Germany's University of Münster, have developed a nanoscale device that is programmable with either photons or electrons.
The incompatibility of electrical and light-based computing system is based on the fundamentally different interaction volumes for electrons and protons.
The researchers solved this problem by combining concepts from integrated photonics, plasmonics, and electronic memory technologies to deliver a compact device that can operate simultaneously as an optical or electrical memory and as a processor.
Exeter's C. David Wright said, “Electronic and photonic computing each have their own advantages and disadvantages: it may be, by exploiting devices such as those we have developed in this work, that we can, ultimately, achieve the best of both worlds by working seamlessly in both domains."
From University of Exeter (U.K.)
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Abstracts Copyright © 2019 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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