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New laser chips could boost computing power thousand-fold
Sep 18, 2006, 19:19 GMT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
What does 'lightening fast' mean?
it means the futures getting brighter all the time.
it means: 'try to remember your spell check feature' in French.
talkback Sep 18th, 2006 - 23:14:50
What does 'lightening fast' mean?
01976 Sep 19th, 2006 - 00:58:39
it means the futures getting brighter all the time.
pecadillo unit Sep 19th, 2006 - 01:04:40
it means: 'try to remember your spell check feature' in French.
Essentially electricity travels at the speed of light already or rather the information waves moving electrically moves that fast (electricity itself vibrates back and forth and moves rather slow depending on the wire size and other factors), however electronic components have to take time to process the information and move it along. This slows down the speed to somewhere between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of the speed of light or less depending on the devices. So to address the first posts question, I think what the new technology could do is allow some of the processes to happen nearly as fast as the movement of light rather then as fast as the typical transistor processor might allow and thus speeding up the processing. Currently processors are made smaller and smaller to speed things up by making them have less distance to travel with the information from component to component. What this would do is allow even larger components to do the work faster then what just shrinking component size can do.
This could benefit us in many ways, one way being that a moron half way around the world with nothing better to do then check peoples spelling could have posted his message at 01:04:39 rather then 01:04 40…
Also… The speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves in a vacuum, which is a physical constant equal to exactly 299,792.458 kilometers per second. Also known as electromagnetic constant; velocity of light.
I hope that helps answer your question.
'a moron half way around the world with nothing better to do then check peoples spelling': 'than', not 'then.
'a moron half way around the world with nothing better to do then check peoples spelling': 'than', not 'then.
'a moron half way around the world with nothing better to do then check peoples spelling': 'than', not 'then.
lol. But, if yer gunnah av yer websight showing up on news.google.com all the time, you should probably use spellcheck. And maybe even a grammar checker to catch the proper use of then vs than. ;) And my own favorite petpeeve is the use of the word myriad, which should always be used as a synonym for 'many' (e.g. there were myriad reasons to invest in a spellchecker). Which brings to mind my 2nd favorite petpeeve, which is the use of 'e.g.' vs 'i.e.'. The abbreviation 'e.g.' stands for Example Given, thus should be used to set off a brief yet succinct example illustrating one's point. The abbreviation 'i.e.' is for In Essence, which is used to set off a brief yet non-specific clarification of one's point (i.e. to distill into a sentence or phrase what has taken otherwise a paragraph to illucidate). Keep the news coming M&C!
Actually what Angelsilver said is not quite relevant. The speed of modern day electronics isn't limited by the speed of electrons, rather it is the problem called 'interconnect'. Basically, to reduce power and speed things up, we are using less and less electrons during calculations. However, when we are sending info from chip to chip, you have to send electrons to the chip's legs, which are gigantic from a point of view of an electrons. So what happen is that, amplifiers are needed at every legs to boost signal from a few electrons to like millions. The more stages of amplifiers, the slower your transmission rate. However, if you don't put in enough amps, then you better have a damn sensitive chips, which can result in transmission error.
An optical chip can bypass this whole issue. With out interconnect to slow things down, chips can communicate as fast as they can process.
p.s. a good example is how internal cache in CPU is much faster than physical RAM. The link between cache and cpu core is miniscule wire, while RAM to CPU require huge circuit board trace. Therefore, more amplifier is required to communicate between RAM and CPU, then cache and CPU.
I.E. stands for a latin phrase meaning 'that is', i.e., id est. E.G. stands for a latin phrase meaning 'for example', i.e., exempli gratia.
What they really, really want is to get their stock quotes high at light speed
thanks, JG, for clarifying that, contrary to some morons' illusions, the world is not entirely American - yet :-)
I agree with Doodle completely. I was simply trying to answer Talkback's question in a way that was easily understood, and do so with minimal research into the specifics. It seems obvious that Doodle has the terminology down better then ~ than ~ then ~ than I. ^^
I do however find it amusing that people come on these comment sections to criticize other peoples use of the written word, especially when we are likely all from different cultures and use words differently then other areas might be taught to do. Even with an actual mistake made, it's even funnier when they do so with half of their comment using the immature net speak style (or lack there of) of writing if I dare call it that. And still it will continue rather then furthering the discussion of the original topic. It’s really sad…
As far as my moron comment, it was more meant to get the posts back on topic with a bit of humor at the expense of my hypothetical moron poster. (Any similarities to an actual moron were unintentional and if any actual morons were offended by my comment, I apologize;)
(Any similarities to an actual moron were unintentional and if any actual morons were offended by my comment, I apologize;)
Thx for making me laugh in the morning.
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