{"id":106393,"date":"2020-05-02T12:23:41","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T19:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/could-photonic-chips-outpace-the-fastest-supercomputers"},"modified":"2020-05-02T12:23:41","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T19:23:41","slug":"could-photonic-chips-outpace-the-fastest-supercomputers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/could-photonic-chips-outpace-the-fastest-supercomputers","title":{"rendered":"Could Photonic Chips Outpace the Fastest Supercomputers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/could-photonic-chips-outpace-the-fastest-supercomputers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s been a lot of talk about quantum computers being able to solve far more complex problems than conventional supercomputers. The authors of a new paper say they\u2019re on the pat h to showing an optical computer c an do so, too.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of using light to carry out computing has a long pedigree, and it has gained traction in recent years with the advent of <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2018\/04\/30\/new-tech-marries-the-best-of-photonics-and-electronics-on-the-same-silicon-chip\/\"> silicon photonics<\/a>, which makes it possible to build optical circuits using the same underlying technology used for electronics. The technology s hows particular promise for <a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2019\/05\/21\/intel-makes-progress-toward-optical-chips-that-accelerate-ai\/\">accelerating deep learning<\/a>, and is being actively pursued by Intel and a number of startups.<\/p>\n<p>Now Chinese researchers have put a photonic chip t o work tackling a fiendishly complex computer science challenge called the s ubset sum problem in a <a href=\"https:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/content\/6\/5\/eaay5853\">paper in <em>Science Advances<\/em><\/a>. It ha s some potential applications in cryptography and resource allocation, but primarily it\u2019s used as a benchmark to test the limits of computing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s been a lot of talk about quantum computers being able to solve far more complex problems than conventional supercomputers. The authors of a new paper say they\u2019re on the pat h to showing an optical computer c an do so, too. The idea of using light to carry out computing has a long pedigree, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1625,1617,6,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encryption","category-quantum-physics","category-robotics-ai","category-supercomputing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}