We always hear that future computers will use optical technology. But what will that look like for a general-purpose computer? German researchers explain it in a recent scientific paper. Although the ...

Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago, paving the way for a host of innovations, including superfast computers that use light instead of electrons to ...

Optical multiplication: a new technique for combining light signals could give optical computers a boost. (Courtesy: iStock/7io) Researchers in Russia and the UK have proposed a new and simple way to ...

Modular optical computer chip allows stackable swappable functions By Michael Irving June 20, 2022 MIT engineers have developed a new modular computer chip that uses flashes of light to communicate ...

Computers that use light instead of circuits to run calculations may sound like a plot point from a Star Trek episode, but researchers have been working on this novel approach to computing for years.

The idea of optical computing—the use of photons instead of electrons to perform computational operations—has been around for decades. However, interest has resurged in recent years; the potential for ...

Excuse me a moment—I am going to be bombastic, over excited, and possibly annoying. The race is run, and we have a winner in the future of quantum computing. IBM, Google, and everyone else can turn in ...

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a powerful new optical chip that can process almost 2 billion images per second. The device is made up of a neural network that processes ...

If you are reading this on your smartphone, its CPU (central processing unit) is running at its full speed. It is a tiny chip containing billions of the more basic units called logic gates. In the ...

A research team has developed an optical computing system for AI and machine learning that not only mitigates the noise inherent to optical computing but actually uses some of it as input to help ...

A machine made from a 5-kilometre-long fibre optic cable coiled into a box a few metres across could give quantum computers a run for their money on certain tasks. The device, which performs ...