Photonics Spectra: microprocessors This is the syndication feed for Photonics Spectra: microprocessors. https://www.photonics.com/Splash.aspx?Tag=microprocessors Thu, 28 Mar 2024 10:32:00 GMT Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT 1800 Plasmonic Tunneling Enables Ultrafast Circuits
A marriage of photonics and nanostructures could enable a huge leap in computer processing speed.

A new technique using plasmonic tunneling has allowed researchers to create electrical circuits that operate at hundreds of terahertz – tens of thousands of times faster than today’s desktop computers.

Assistant professor Dr. Christian A. Nijhuis of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and colleagues used two plasmonic resonators, bridged by a layer of molecules exactly one molecule thick, to create an element of a molecular electronic circuit. The layer of molecules switches on the quantum plasmonic tunneling effects, enabling the circuits to operate at terahertz frequencies.

A focused electron beam (in...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Plasmonic_Tunneling_Enables_Ultrafast_Circuits/p5/a56065 A56065 Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT
New Devices Could Realize Optical Microprocessing
The development of two new devices — a modulator and a tunable filter — that are energy efficient and were built using a standard IBM advanced CMOS process represents a major milestone in optical microprocessing, researchers say.

As part of DARPA’s Photonically Optimized Embedded Microprocessors (POEM) project, researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley are working to demonstrate that low-power photonic devices can be fabricated using standard chip-making processes.

Microscope image of the full chip fabricated in IBM’s CMOS process. Courtesy of MIT.
These two devices are key components for the communication link between a computer’s...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/New_Devices_Could_Realize_Optical_Microprocessing/p5/a55871 A55871 Thu, 20 Feb 2014 00:00:00 GMT
Nanolasers grown on silicon surface
Nanolasers now can be grown directly onto a silicon surface, an achievement that could lead to a new class of faster, more efficient microprocessors, as well as to powerful biochemical sensors that use optoelectronic chips.

The results are expected to affect a number of scientific fields, including materials science, transistor technology, laser science, optoelectronics and optical physics, according to a group of engineers at the University of California. Their work was published online Feb. 6, 2011, in Nature Photonics (doi: 10.1038/nphoton.2010.315).

In search of a better way to harness light particles so that they may carry more data than electrical signals can, the researchers turned to a class of materials known as III-V...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Nanolasers_grown_on_silicon_surface/p5/a46572 A46572 Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT
Nanolasers Grown on Silicon Surface
Nanolasers have been grown directly onto a silicon surface, an achievement that could lead to a new class of faster, more efficient microprocessors, as well as to powerful biochemical sensors that use optoelectronic chips.

"Our results impact a broad spectrum of scientific fields, including materials science, transistor technology, laser science, optoelectronics and optical physics," said the study's principal investigator, Connie Chang-Hasnain, University of California, Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences.

The unique structure of the nanopillars grown by UC Berkeley researchers strongly confines light in a tiny volume to enable subwavelength nanolasers. Images on the left and top right show...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Nanolasers_Grown_on_Silicon_Surface/p5/a45857 A45857 Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT
Lighting the way to ultrafast microprocessors
The first milestone toward lightwave electronics has been achieved, thanks to a collaboration among physicists at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, FOM Institute AMOLF (Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and chemists at Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich.

Now, for the first time, light has been used to control single electrons within a molecular compound. The ability to pick out and guide individual electrons is the first step on the road to light-waveform electronics in which microprocessor speeds could reach attosecond timescales.

Attosecond research is at the frontier of laser physics, and the generation of short, phase-stable light pulses has been a key goal....]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Lighting_the_way_to_ultrafast_microprocessors/p5/a40257 A40257 Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Silicon Chips May Go 'Green'
In a well-attended presentation Wednesday afternoon at Frontiers in Optics 2009, Sasan Fathpour, assistant professor of integrated photonics & energy solutions at the University of Central Florida's CREOL (College of Optics and Photonics), outlined the benefits and challenges facing engineers attempting to make integrated photonic components more environmentally friendly.

Computing-related power usage represented 15 percent of the total power consumption in the US in 2007, he said, and most of the power...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Silicon_Chips_May_Go_Green/p5/a40046 A40046 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Silicon Chips May Go 'Green'
In a well-attended presentation Wednesday afternoon at Frontiers in Optics 2009, Sasan Fathpour, assistant professor of integrated photonics & energy solutions at the University of Central Florida's CREOL (College of Optics and Photonics), outlined the benefits and challenges facing engineers attempting to make integrated photonic components more environmentally friendly.

Computing-related power usage represented 15 percent of the total power consumption in the US in 2007, he said, and most of the power...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Silicon_Chips_May_Go_Green/p5/a40049 A40049 Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT
HP Files Appeal in Patent Dispute https://www.photonics.com/Articles/HP_Files_Appeal_in_Patent_Dispute/p5/a37079 A37079 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT IBM, CEA/Leti to Collaborate
IBM said its five-year agreement with CEA/Leti (the Electronics and Information Technology Laboratory of Grenoble-based research and technology organization CEA) will focus on advanced materials, devices and processes for the development of CMOS technology needed to make microprocessors and integrated circuits at 22 nm and beyond.

Under the agreement, CEA/Leti becomes a research associate of IBM and IBM’s semiconductor Joint Development Alliance ecosystem centered in Albany. CEA/Leti will contribute its expertise in low-power CMOS (such as SOI technologies),...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/IBM_CEA_Leti_to_Collaborate/p5/a37031 A37031 Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Technology: Machine Vision
A few years ago, microprocessors hit a speed limit. Cranking up the clock was no longer feasible, courtesy of some basic physics. However, customers expected increasing computing power.

The industry’s solution was to put two or more processing cores into a single chip. Today, four- and eight-core devices are available. Soon there will be chips with tens and hundreds of cores.

The result could be a significant boost to machine vision. Matt Slaughter, product marketing engineer for vision at Austin, Texas-based National Instruments, said a two-core chip has almost double the vision processing capability of one with a single core, while a four-core chip offers about 3.5 times the power.

One core good; many cores better. Intel’s...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Technology_Machine_Vision/p5/a36239 A36239 Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT
Radio Harvests Energy
If changing the batteries in the remote control or smoke detector seems like a chore, imagine having to change hundreds of batteries in sensors scattered across a busy bridge. That's why Kansas State University engineers are helping a semiconductor manufacturer implement its idea of an energy-harvesting radio. It could transmit important data – for example, stress measurements on a bridge – without needing a change of batteries, ever.

An in-progress demonstration board of an energy-harvesting radio developed at Kansas State University. The finished board includes solar cells to power the radio. Photo courtesy of Kansas State University’s department of electrical and computer engineering.
Bill Kuhn, K-State professor of electrical and...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Radio_Harvests_Energy/p5/a35841 A35841 Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Mike Splain Named VP at Sun https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Mike_Splain_Named_VP_at_Sun/p5/a33455 A33455 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT AMD Reports Loss, Layoffs
First quarter 2008 gross margin was 42 percent compared to 44 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 and 28 percent in the first quarter of 2007. The decrease from the prior quarter was primarily due to decreased microprocessor unit shipments, AMD said in a statement.

AMD's chief financial officer, Robert Rivet, said the results reflect a weak first quarter "amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/AMD_Reports_Loss_Layoffs/p5/a33419 A33419 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT
Intel Opens 'Fab 32'
Called "Fab 32," the $3 billion factory, in Chandler, Ariz., will use Intel's 45-nm process technology, based on what it calls its breakthrough in "reinventing" certain areas of the transistors inside processors to reduce energy leakage. The 45-nm transistors use a Hafnium-based high-k material for the gate dielectric and metal materials for the gate, and they are so small that more than 2 million can fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Millions of these tiny transistors will make up Intel's faster, more energy efficient lead- and...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Intel_Opens_Fab_32/p5/a31276 A31276 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT
Single-Pixel Camera
In an ordinary digital camera, the lens focuses light onto a chip containing millions of photodiodes, each of which captures one point of light in every frame. Microprocessors then perform battery-draining computations that compress the data into a smaller form for storage, using an algorithm such as jpeg.


An original image (left) is shown with 85 percent of it removed (center). An image taken with the prototype camera (right) has only 15 percent of the measurements of the original, demonstrating its ability to create high-resolution images comparable to that of conventional imaging.

Richard Baraniuk and Kevin Kelly of Rice University in Houston have developed a technique that con-verts light directly into compressed data. Unlike...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Single-Pixel_Camera/p5/a27240 A27240 Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT
Study: Nanotube Bundle Could Make Nano-Oscillator
Even the smallest devices, assembled at the molecular level, need motors and oscillators in order to work. University of California Riverside Mechanical Engineering Professor Qing Jiang said his recent findings show bundling groups of carbon nanotubes together could make an ultra-efficient and accurate nano-oscillator.

In the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology, nanodevices are becoming an increasingly key component in everything from drug delivery to improving or even replacing the microprocessors in computers or optical switches in telecommunications networks, Jiang said.

“A nano-oscillator itself is a vitally important device or component for nanosystems, in which some parts have to experience relative motion of...]]>
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Study_Nanotube_Bundle_Could_Make_Nano-Oscillator/p5/a25525 A25525 Fri, 19 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT