Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and wasn't a Forward Thinking The
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says revped up
Speaker 1: like a deuce. Another Runner in the Night. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren Vogelbaum is
Speaker 1: not with us today, but she will be back soon. Yes, So, Joe, Uh,
Speaker 1: have you heard of Moore's law? Moore's Law? We've talked
Speaker 1: about it on this very podcast so many times now,
Speaker 1: so I guess that means you have, in fact heard
Speaker 1: of it. I've heard of it. I've talked about it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I know a lot of interesting things about it, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the fact that it's not really a law,
Speaker 1: is it. No, it's an observation. Gordon Moore made this
Speaker 1: observation in a paper that and I'm paraphrasing here because
Speaker 1: I didn't write it down in my notes, but it
Speaker 1: had something to do with something like cramming more components
Speaker 1: on a silicon chip is something along those line. But
Speaker 1: he was essentially observing that because of improvements in manufacturing
Speaker 1: processes and the fact that they were able to find
Speaker 1: uses for more powerful microprocessors, that we were seeing a
Speaker 1: doubling of the number of components on a chip every
Speaker 1: two years or so. It all depends upon the era
Speaker 1: that you look at Moore's law. It can go from
Speaker 1: as little as twelve months to as long as two years.
Speaker 1: I think it. I think it started as a year
Speaker 1: and has extended now. But the generalization often is like
Speaker 1: eight every eighteen months or so. Some people might say, um,
Speaker 1: you should see in the way this manifest practically is
Speaker 1: a doubling in computer power, Yes, computer processing power. So
Speaker 1: while it may not be a physical doubling of actual
Speaker 1: components on a microprocessor, the outcome now is that it's
Speaker 1: a doubling of the microprocessors computing power. This this is
Speaker 1: all about, how you know, through the entire history of
Speaker 1: what is known as Moore's law, we have tweaked the
Speaker 1: definition to suit whatever the current state was. That's true,
Speaker 1: we have extended the time period a little bit. But
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that this prediction has been remarkably consistent. Yes,
Speaker 1: and some people might say that it's sort of a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy that, but by stating this observation, it
Speaker 1: has helped us. Uh, not us like Jonathan and I,
Speaker 1: but much smarter people, computer scientists, much more educated and
Speaker 1: capable people, really keep this thing going, right. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a goal for people who work in
Speaker 1: the computer's field to say, look, we want to keep
Speaker 1: this this prediction true. We want to make sure that
Speaker 1: the devices that we're designing in two years time are
Speaker 1: going to be twice as powerful as the ones we're
Speaker 1: designing today. Therefore, we've got this goal to shoot for,
Speaker 1: and it means making some pretty amazing leaps and engineering.
Speaker 1: Of course, the sad thing about worse law is that
Speaker 1: the honeymoon can't last forever. Yeah. So Moore's law is
Speaker 1: one of those things that has been predicted to be
Speaker 1: on death's door ever since the probably nineteen eighties, maybe
Speaker 1: even earlier. Yeah, and it hasn't been so far, but
Speaker 1: we know that at some point it has to, at
Speaker 1: least if we're going to be building our computers based
Speaker 1: upon the same architecture that we've been using up till now. Right,
Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of different things that
Speaker 1: you might sort of notice will end up working against
Speaker 1: Moore's law. One of them, I think is just sort
Speaker 1: of a funny observation that has been consistent for a
Speaker 1: while now. It's referred to as pages law. I think
Speaker 1: it was coined by Sergey Brynn Right of Google. Uh,
Speaker 1: it may have been. I'm not familiar with the actual
Speaker 1: origin of it. I do know what the law is, however,
Speaker 1: I think it was well, yeah, so what is the law.
Speaker 1: The law is that as we get more powerful hardware,
Speaker 1: software will rise to meet the challenge to make that
Speaker 1: hardware just as slow as what we're used to exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's like if every eighteen months your computer hardware,
Speaker 1: you know, a new computer will get twice as fast,
Speaker 1: every eighteen months software gets twice as slow. Right, the
Speaker 1: software becomes more complex, more bloated, so that crammed with
Speaker 1: features you don't want that I could take longer to execute.
Speaker 1: And this maybe one explanation for why it just seems
Speaker 1: like that computer that used to be so speedy is
Speaker 1: really sluggish now, or or even just that the brand
Speaker 1: new computer you bought is as fast as the brand
Speaker 1: new computer you bought two years ago. It's just now
Speaker 1: it's running software that's two years further along as well,
Speaker 1: So everything has evened out. The playing field has not
Speaker 1: changed at all. In other words, if software manufacturers made
Speaker 1: a product and then never updated it, so it was
Speaker 1: the same. Like, let's say that there's a productivity suite
Speaker 1: that you like and it has never been updated. It's
Speaker 1: the same suite year after year after year. You can
Speaker 1: still get it, but it's no different than it was
Speaker 1: when it premiered. Your computer would run that it was nothing.
Speaker 1: It would be just lightning fast. But that's not the
Speaker 1: way the world works. In order to make money, these
Speaker 1: these companies continue to upgrade their software, which means that
Speaker 1: you are now running a more um complicated, bloated you
Speaker 1: might say, software suite, and it runs just as quickly
Speaker 1: or slowly. There's your features, Jonathan, their features. They make
Speaker 1: it better, right because because more is always better, right, Like,
Speaker 1: so I definitely want to have that feature that no
Speaker 1: person ever in the history of mankind has ever actually used,
Speaker 1: but I want to be there just because that way
Speaker 1: I have the option. Yeah. So there is pages law,
Speaker 1: and that's been tracking More's law for a while now.
Speaker 1: But there are also some physical limitations More's law might encountered.
Speaker 1: So not just imposed by over ambitious or greedy software developers,
Speaker 1: but by the laws of physics themselves. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: of those is called dinnered scaling or Denard scaling, depending
Speaker 1: upon how you prefer to pronounce it. Right. Well, technically
Speaker 1: we're talking about not denards scaling, but the end of right.
Speaker 1: So this scaling is all about the way these these
Speaker 1: microprocessors receive power. Right. And then as long as uh,
Speaker 1: the scaling holds true, then the amount of power we
Speaker 1: need to keep these micro transistors working microprocessors rather not
Speaker 1: transistors working, will will be neck connect so that the
Speaker 1: development will maintain, so we continue to have optimal efficiency
Speaker 1: as far as we can based upon electronics. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: should be obvious, but I guess worth saying. The chip
Speaker 1: in your computer is an electronic device. It needs electrons
Speaker 1: flowing through it to work. Yeah. So here's the issue.
Speaker 1: The problem is that once we got to having components
Speaker 1: of a certain size. Remember the whole idea here is
Speaker 1: that we're maturizing components so that we can fit more
Speaker 1: of them into the same physical space. Right. Your laptop
Speaker 1: doesn't get twice as fast becoming twice as big because
Speaker 1: twice as fast staying the same size. Right, And that's
Speaker 1: because we have managed to find new architectures that either
Speaker 1: either use the the features that we have designed more effectively,
Speaker 1: or they have decreased the size of those individual components
Speaker 1: so that you can fit more of them onto the chip. This,
Speaker 1: by the way, is similar to the tik talk approach
Speaker 1: with Intel. Intel calls their development TikTok. The tick is
Speaker 1: when they end up creating brand new majorized components. The
Speaker 1: talk is when they have figured out the ideal architecture
Speaker 1: to lay out those components so that they are at
Speaker 1: their most efficient. Each ends up meaning that you get
Speaker 1: a boost in your computer's performance. The first is just
Speaker 1: because it's just got more power, more horsepower in a sense.
Speaker 1: The second is because you have, uh, you have optimized
Speaker 1: the layout so that you get the most out of
Speaker 1: that horse power. Well, the problem with this Denard scaling
Speaker 1: coming to an end is that once you get to
Speaker 1: transistors below ninety nanometers in size, which we're already there, um,
Speaker 1: you start getting electrical current leakage issues, which means that
Speaker 1: the efficiency overall of your system decreases. So maybe, so
Speaker 1: that's saying like, even if you could continue shrinking the chip,
Speaker 1: you might not be getting a return on that exactly,
Speaker 1: and that would tie right back into Gordon Moore's observation.
Speaker 1: He had said that this was really an element of
Speaker 1: manufacturing and economics and less of some sort of innate,
Speaker 1: you know law that that guides computers becoming twice as
Speaker 1: powerful over a set amount of time. He was saying
Speaker 1: that it only holds true if the manufacturing processes and
Speaker 1: the economic returns makes sense. If they no longer make sense,
Speaker 1: the law falls flat. So it may come a time where,
Speaker 1: because the efficiency has dropped to such a point, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for us to make electronic components any smaller,
Speaker 1: even if we are able to. So we might say,
Speaker 1: you know, engineering wise, we can make a microchip that
Speaker 1: has even smaller components, but because of electrical leakage, it's
Speaker 1: not going to perform any better than the chips we
Speaker 1: already have. Therefore, it makes no sense to actually do that.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan, Yeah, what about a crazy alternative. I like
Speaker 1: that you did jazz hands. Is this like a musical?
Speaker 1: Like like, we have computers that sing. I do them
Speaker 1: because the listeners cannot see them, and it brings me
Speaker 1: pleasure to have that secret. Okay, sorry, I I just
Speaker 1: ignore that. Listeners just pretend like I didn't say anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: this crazy alternative is today's microchip architecture, and our transistors
Speaker 1: are based on electronics. So you're you're using electrons, these
Speaker 1: little particles that are part of an atom. That's the
Speaker 1: same way all our other electronics. So negative to h
Speaker 1: your puns are strong. Okay, what if instead of using
Speaker 1: electronics we turned our attention to photonics. Oh so you're
Speaker 1: talking about fundamental particles of light, right, so instead of
Speaker 1: messing around with electrons, you mess around with photons. That
Speaker 1: is an interesting idea that a lot of people are very,
Speaker 1: very smart people are concentrating on right now. Yes, I
Speaker 1: want to clarify this transition. It was not my idea.
Speaker 1: It is something we have read about. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: something that we wanted to talk about because it's really
Speaker 1: an exciting proposition, especially for certain types of computing. It
Speaker 1: may it may turn out that there's never a practical
Speaker 1: way for this to become like the average computers architecture.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it could very well become the
Speaker 1: future of computing. It could, it could. It's really early
Speaker 1: to say. Right now. The feel this still developing. We
Speaker 1: we are still working on creating the fundamental building blocks
Speaker 1: that this sort of computer system would depend upon in
Speaker 1: order for it to work as we understand computers to
Speaker 1: work today. And here's part of the issue before we
Speaker 1: even get into all the details. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that we've we've really written that electronic computer train
Speaker 1: really far right. We have advanced to such a point
Speaker 1: that in order to transition to a completely different computing platform,
Speaker 1: or at least a different architecture, we would need to
Speaker 1: have that architecture be advanced to the point where it
Speaker 1: could at least be a lateral move uh initially and
Speaker 1: then to continue to develop in order for Moore's law
Speaker 1: to remain at all relevant or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: applicable in some way. So, oh, I see, so like
Speaker 1: it would be very frustrating if there were a twenty
Speaker 1: year gap in Moore's law while we're waiting for for
Speaker 1: potonic computers to catch up to electronics, right, we would
Speaker 1: we would essentially have plateaued with electronic computers. We would
Speaker 1: not be able to really get measurably faster. We might
Speaker 1: be able to do some tweaking here and there, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some at least one alternative towards the end.
Speaker 1: Of this episode to photonics. That could have us see
Speaker 1: some some development continue using a tweak on traditional architecture.
Speaker 1: But it would mean that we would see a cease
Speaker 1: in the rapid escalation of microprocessor performance until photonics got
Speaker 1: fast enough so that it could take over and be
Speaker 1: the next new thing. And maybe that both are working
Speaker 1: in parallel for a while. Um, we don't know, because
Speaker 1: photonics still are relatively young when it comes to optical computers.
Speaker 1: But we have been working in photonics for decades. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have already interacted almost definitely with tons
Speaker 1: of photonic devices. One of the big ones I would
Speaker 1: like to bring up is just optical fiber. Absolutely so
Speaker 1: it's really becoming like an industry standard. Yeah. I come
Speaker 1: from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the the electric powerboard, the local
Speaker 1: one has optical fiber to the home. Uh. It's people
Speaker 1: love it there. It's super super fast, awesome throughput. It
Speaker 1: is a good system. People are really happy with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So optical fiber. Uh, this is this is kind of
Speaker 1: what has provided sort of a foundation for the photonics industry.
Speaker 1: The two two big developments that happened in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century that have made photonics a an interesting area of
Speaker 1: study was the development of lasers and the development of
Speaker 1: optical fiber. So fiber optics are it's phenomenal in that
Speaker 1: you can really find creative ways to transmit data, multiple
Speaker 1: data streams across a single optical fiber simultaneously. And if
Speaker 1: you think about just how optical fiber works, it's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. I mean talking about beaming these uh, these
Speaker 1: wave particle pulses of light, pulses of light refracting through
Speaker 1: a tiny essentially like a glass kind of cord across
Speaker 1: miles and miles. It's really strange. So so you've essentially
Speaker 1: covered the basis. It's the idea of you've got I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to be really really simple, if you
Speaker 1: were to really boil this down to a very simple idea,
Speaker 1: imagine that, uh, that you and a friend are standing
Speaker 1: across from a football field and you have created a code.
Speaker 1: Let's even say it's just Morse code. You haven't created it,
Speaker 1: you're just relying on Morse code. You each have a flashlight, uh,
Speaker 1: and you flashed the light on and off in uh
Speaker 1: in you know, using the code as your basis, and
Speaker 1: you send messages to each other essentially with a fiber
Speaker 1: optic cable. You have a very high tech version of this,
Speaker 1: although it gets a lot more complex. So you have
Speaker 1: emitters and sensors on either end that are converting these
Speaker 1: light messages back into electronic messages. Or take an electronic
Speaker 1: message converted to light, send it across the optical fiber,
Speaker 1: where when it gets to its destination it converts back
Speaker 1: into electric messages so that a computer can understand it. Right.
Speaker 1: So the neat thing is not only does this travel
Speaker 1: at the speed of light across that optical fiber, not
Speaker 1: only do you not have to worry so much about
Speaker 1: interference with other types of signals because photons are pretty
Speaker 1: good about not getting mixed up with that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They're not into, you know, being influenced by the wrong crowd.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about electromagnetic interference with photons.
Speaker 1: The other cool thing is that you can use different
Speaker 1: polarities of light, because you know light you can polarize
Speaker 1: in different ways, or you can even use different wavelengths
Speaker 1: of light, which we perceive as color right in the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum. Anyway, you can use different wavelengths of light,
Speaker 1: and then you can transmit multiple messages across the same
Speaker 1: optical fiber simultaneously and they and interfere with each other.
Speaker 1: Photons won't mess with other photons, so you could have
Speaker 1: you know, ten different streams of data going across one
Speaker 1: single optical fiber. You could even have it going in
Speaker 1: both directions at once. It's bidirectional, so you could have
Speaker 1: this communication going on. It's superspeeds. That's why you're able
Speaker 1: to get that huge data throughput. So the neat thing
Speaker 1: is that we've even seen cables for computers come out
Speaker 1: using this technology. Things. Uh, the original development name was
Speaker 1: light Peak, and then Apple bought it and and rebranded
Speaker 1: it as Thunderbolt, So the initial Thunderbolt cables, I believe
Speaker 1: we're all still copper. But the plan was to move
Speaker 1: to fiber optics using this technology, where you could do
Speaker 1: multi threading through fiber optics and have really rapid data
Speaker 1: transfers like twenty gigabytes in just a couple of seconds.
Speaker 1: It's crazy how fast we're talking. Now, what if see
Speaker 1: you still have a slow point, You still have a
Speaker 1: bottleneck at either end of that cable, right because you
Speaker 1: still have to convert the electricity to light and on
Speaker 1: the other end, convert that light back into electricity so
Speaker 1: that it can communicate with our devices. Because our devices
Speaker 1: rely on electronic transistors. But if we could change that,
Speaker 1: if we could make the fundamental components of our devices
Speaker 1: communicate through light rather than through electricity, everything we had
Speaker 1: would have that kind of throughput. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of like having a universal currency instead of having to
Speaker 1: go to the exchanger. Yeah, it would just mean that
Speaker 1: everything would be able to move at this incredible rate
Speaker 1: with these incredible options. But again you'd have to figure out, all, right,
Speaker 1: how do we achieve that, how do we build these
Speaker 1: fundamental blocks that we've depended upon. I mean, the development
Speaker 1: of the transistor dates back to the nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: then we've seen the transistor improve over time since then.
Speaker 1: So we would essentially have to reinvent the transistor. And people,
Speaker 1: by the way, have done that with photonics instead of
Speaker 1: with electricity. Okay, so I'm trying to imagine the photonic
Speaker 1: computer or the future. I'd assume you'd still base it
Speaker 1: on some kind of binary and coding of data, right,
Speaker 1: So unless you were going to completely change computer science
Speaker 1: and information theory. Unless you were to go to a
Speaker 1: point where you say, all right, well let's abandon boolean logic,
Speaker 1: let's abandon the basis for computers and create something entirely new.
Speaker 1: Then what the most logical approach is to say, how
Speaker 1: can we achieve a boolean logic based computer system but
Speaker 1: use photonic equipment rather than electronic equipment. That sounds kind
Speaker 1: of fancy, but what that really really boils down to
Speaker 1: is inside your computer, everything is a matter of a
Speaker 1: long series of on and off switches. Yes, those transistors,
Speaker 1: and those transistors are what we're essentially talking about as
Speaker 1: on off switches. Their gates that allow the flow of
Speaker 1: electrons in an electronic based system, but it would be
Speaker 1: photons in an optical based system. It would be a
Speaker 1: gate that would either allow photons to pass through or
Speaker 1: would prevent them in some way in order for it
Speaker 1: to still represent that one or zero, that bit. That
Speaker 1: is the basis of information theory in the modern computing age.
Speaker 1: So you would have to rebuild those basic components you
Speaker 1: find in computers, things like transistors, which if you arrange
Speaker 1: transistors in a proper way, you can create logic gates.
Speaker 1: This is like the and or nor If you ever
Speaker 1: study any basic logic, these are the basic functions that
Speaker 1: allow you to make statements and then evaluate those statements
Speaker 1: to get to the proper conclusions. That's the basis of
Speaker 1: computing today. That's exactly how computers work. So you would
Speaker 1: have to be able to make those logic gates using
Speaker 1: these photonic elements. Uh, and so right now, the state
Speaker 1: of the art as it stands today is all about
Speaker 1: trying to find new ways to create those those fundamental
Speaker 1: components that will make up an optical computer and be useful.
Speaker 1: Like we we've seen several several developments that are really interesting,
Speaker 1: but they are mostly proof of concept things that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be practical. I guess one of the big issues has
Speaker 1: got to be miniaturization. That would drinking it down. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right, Yeah, getting these components to be really, really tiny.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about like when you're talking about
Speaker 1: a microprocessor. Just think about those tiny computer chips you've seen,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind that the components, the individual components
Speaker 1: on that chip are at forty five nanometers or even smaller.
Speaker 1: And a nanometer is a billionth of a meter. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about billions of components on a single microprocessor.
Speaker 1: Now you have to create something that can emit light
Speaker 1: and sense light, and and be able to to essentially
Speaker 1: do that without becoming an enormous machine. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: a lot of the work that's done in labs, you
Speaker 1: might be able to create system that is a good
Speaker 1: proof of concept. But what if you if you made
Speaker 1: an entire computer that was of equivalent power to one
Speaker 1: of today's PCs using that technology, it would go back
Speaker 1: to the old days where your basic computer was the
Speaker 1: size of a building. So that would mean that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be terribly practical on your next business trip. So
Speaker 1: who's actually built like a photonic transistor so far? Well,
Speaker 1: early works started in the nineteen eighties, so there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of people who have worked on it
Speaker 1: in various ways. But one of the more recent interesting
Speaker 1: stories was about some researchers that they might t back
Speaker 1: in July of two thousand and thirteen, they built an
Speaker 1: all optical transistor that could switch between zero and one
Speaker 1: using a single photon. So we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: beam of light, we're not talking about a laser beam.
Speaker 1: We're talking about one photon. Remember that a photon represents
Speaker 1: a particle of light, but that light connect both as
Speaker 1: a particle and a wave, which means it has some
Speaker 1: quantum uh features, some features we're talking about stuff when
Speaker 1: I say some quantum features, essentially, be prepared to have
Speaker 1: your mind bent. Yeah. The best way to understand this
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with this concept is just to
Speaker 1: like go on the internet and look up the double
Speaker 1: slit experiment right where you know the is that's certainly
Speaker 1: a mind bending experiment where you know things that you know,
Speaker 1: you would think, you know, you would think it should
Speaker 1: behave a certain way and always behave that way, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that's that's not right. So in this
Speaker 1: particular implementation, what they had was to a pair of mirrors,
Speaker 1: okay uh, and the mirrors could perform in two different ways.
Speaker 1: When it was in the on position, let's say that's
Speaker 1: that represents a one in bit language, a photon could
Speaker 1: pass straight through both mirrors the pair of mirrors that
Speaker 1: are placed very closely together, extremely closely, as I'll mention
Speaker 1: in a second, when it's in the off position, only
Speaker 1: to any percent of the light would actually pass through
Speaker 1: the mirrors. In other words, the photon would get bounced back.
Speaker 1: A single photon would not make it through. And here's
Speaker 1: the reason why this works. Light does behave both as
Speaker 1: a particle on a wave. Now, if it acted only
Speaker 1: as a particle, it wouldn't matter whether the switch was
Speaker 1: on or off. It would encounter that first mirror and
Speaker 1: bounce off. It would be like you know, you running
Speaker 1: out a wall. You're not You're never not going to
Speaker 1: bounce off that wall unless the walls made of something
Speaker 1: really weak and you crash through cool a man style.
Speaker 1: But let's say let's say it's a cinder block solid wall.
Speaker 1: You would kind of splat slash bounce off of it.
Speaker 1: It would not be pleasant. However, light also acts as
Speaker 1: a wave, and so if you were to look at
Speaker 1: a wavelength of light, the electromagnetic field of a single
Speaker 1: photon would overlap the two mirrors because the mirrors are
Speaker 1: placed so that they are the same distance apart as
Speaker 1: a wavelength of whatever light you're using. So so, different
Speaker 1: types of light have different wavelengths, like different colors. One
Speaker 1: one color has a longer wavelength of light than another. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you look at the the roy g biv spectrum,
Speaker 1: like a rainbow, red to violet. When you're on the
Speaker 1: red side, those are the longer wavelengths. The further along
Speaker 1: you get in that spectrum, the shorter the wavelengths are.
Speaker 1: At any rate, you would have to have these two
Speaker 1: mirrors placed at the wavelength that corresponds to that particular
Speaker 1: type of light. If you did that, and you you
Speaker 1: know you had this properly set up, when that switches on,
Speaker 1: the electron would pass through as if nothing were there,
Speaker 1: because the wavelength completely overlaps the distance of those two mirrors,
Speaker 1: So it acts on a quantum level like there's nothing there. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's no, there's no counterpart to this. On the macro level.
Speaker 1: We can't have a version of Joe running at that
Speaker 1: cement wall where Joe passes through the wall as if
Speaker 1: nothing were there, because Joe only acts like a particle,
Speaker 1: not like a wave. Okay, So, as freaky as this is,
Speaker 1: it's not the only way to manipulate light for logic
Speaker 1: gates at the scale. Right, that's right, because you could
Speaker 1: do something. See again, one of the big issues here
Speaker 1: is maturization. Right, how do you manaturize these mirrors and
Speaker 1: lasers so that you can manipulate light in this way?
Speaker 1: One other way you could take this approach is by
Speaker 1: developing something called meta materials meta materials. Yeah, so meta
Speaker 1: materials are man made. They're really really awesome. Okay, so
Speaker 1: meta materials are way are materials that interact with electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation in interesting ways, and it's all based on the
Speaker 1: physical structure of the material, right, So when we say
Speaker 1: they're synthetic, of course we don't mean they're made of
Speaker 1: synthetic atoms. They're made of natural atoms. But there can
Speaker 1: be made of anything, really, I mean, some some do
Speaker 1: certain jobs better than others. But what's really cool about
Speaker 1: the materials is the chemical composition doesn't matter so much
Speaker 1: as the physical structure of the material, right. It's how
Speaker 1: they're put together. It's the actual Like, if you were
Speaker 1: able to zoom in on a nano level of these materials,
Speaker 1: you would see certain repeated patterns. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of like think of it like a scaffold, but it's
Speaker 1: a scaffold that extends out in three dimensions, so you
Speaker 1: would see these repeated patterns. Those repeated patterns would be
Speaker 1: what gives the meta materials whatever particular function they happen
Speaker 1: to have, and they can have different ones, depending upon
Speaker 1: the way you structure these things. In general, if you
Speaker 1: create a meta material that has a structure where the
Speaker 1: repeating patterns are smaller than the wavelength of whatever light
Speaker 1: you're using, that light can pass through the meta materials
Speaker 1: as if it weren't there. This is also, by the way,
Speaker 1: the basis for a lot of cloaking technology, but that
Speaker 1: cloaking technology tends to be focused on microwaves because microwaves
Speaker 1: are even longer than visible light. Yeah, the problem is
Speaker 1: getting the meta materials small and densely packed enough to
Speaker 1: interact with things that have these tiny wavelengths. Right, And
Speaker 1: if if you wanted to have a cloaking device that
Speaker 1: managed to cloak against all visible light, that'd be really
Speaker 1: tricky because again, visible light takes up a spectrum of wavelengths. Right,
Speaker 1: So you could in theory make a really effective cloaking
Speaker 1: device that cloaks you against a particular hue of red.
Speaker 1: So that would mean that uh, you know, red light
Speaker 1: would pass through, but other light would bounce back, so
Speaker 1: you would you know, you would still see everything, but
Speaker 1: red in whatever reflected back. Well, I can't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if we can predict exactly what it would
Speaker 1: look like it would look very weird. You would see
Speaker 1: a bizarre site. Well, all the red light would pass
Speaker 1: through it, but the other light would behave just as
Speaker 1: light normally would on such an object. Right, I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that would end up looking like
Speaker 1: to your eyes. I guess it all depends on what
Speaker 1: look like before you started messing with the meta materials.
Speaker 1: At any rate, there are some researchers who hope that
Speaker 1: they can use meta materials in photonics, which would also
Speaker 1: lead to improvements in miniaturization because you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about seating these tiny little mirrors. You would instead
Speaker 1: create these tiny what would appear to be solid objects,
Speaker 1: but would be made in such a way that light
Speaker 1: could pass through them when they were aligned properly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually read I thought a really interesting article about
Speaker 1: some research that was published just this month. It was
Speaker 1: out of the uh Well, it was from researchers at
Speaker 1: the Australian National University, and they published a paper in
Speaker 1: Nature Communications called Spontaneous chiral symmetry Breaking in Meta Materials,
Speaker 1: and a couple of the authors were interviewed about the
Speaker 1: paper in an article for fiz Org where they talked
Speaker 1: about the discovery. So they built this material that was
Speaker 1: capable of rotating the polarization of light. You were talking
Speaker 1: about that earlier. And in order to make photonic devices
Speaker 1: like computer chips, you need to be able to control
Speaker 1: the properties of tiny amounts of light, and one of
Speaker 1: those properties is its polarization. The cool thing that these
Speaker 1: A and YOU researchers were able to come up with
Speaker 1: was a material that would respond to a beam of light,
Speaker 1: so they could control the behavior of the meta material
Speaker 1: by shining light on it or not. In other words,
Speaker 1: the effects the polarization of light switching could be turned
Speaker 1: on or off with the beam of light. That means
Speaker 1: minute direct control of the effect of this meta material structure,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really cool. Like one of the
Speaker 1: authors of the paper was interviewed about it, and his
Speaker 1: name was Dr David Powell, and he said, it's another
Speaker 1: completely new tool in the toolbox for processing light thin slices.
Speaker 1: These materials can replace bulky collections of lenses and mirrors.
Speaker 1: This miniaturization could lead to the creation of more compact
Speaker 1: opto electronic devices, such as a light based version of
Speaker 1: the electronic transistor so I think that's really cool and
Speaker 1: making these little, uh sort of light controlled machines on
Speaker 1: this tiny, tiny level. Yeah. One one thing we do
Speaker 1: also have to point out is that it's generally accepted
Speaker 1: in the field of photonics. And I say that by
Speaker 1: you know, kind of distancing myself from this, because obviously
Speaker 1: I am not an expert in these things. I have
Speaker 1: to take the information I read and try and judge
Speaker 1: its veracity as much as I can. You know. On
Speaker 1: that note, I will say, for some reason, I find
Speaker 1: photonics one of the most difficult scientific subjects. Well, we research,
Speaker 1: we talked about all different kinds of subjects. We're experts
Speaker 1: in none but but, but optical physics seems to be
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult of all the different fields.
Speaker 1: It's quantum. It's so quantum. That's so quantum. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite shows in the nineties. Uh they what were
Speaker 1: you saying? Well, I was going to say that one
Speaker 1: of the things that's generally accepted is that you have
Speaker 1: a limitation here in the sense that light has set wavelengths, right,
Speaker 1: you cannot change those wavelengths. That's that's a property of light.
Speaker 1: So different colors of light, of a different wavelength. Like
Speaker 1: we mentioned, UH, generally speaking, visible light is between one
Speaker 1: hundred nanometers and a thousand nanometers or or a micrometer
Speaker 1: in size. That's that's generally speaking, the the spectrum of
Speaker 1: light that falls into the visible range, although you probably
Speaker 1: would say more like between four hundred and seven hundred
Speaker 1: nanometers to be uh to be fair. Now too, that
Speaker 1: means that the components for photonics can only get down
Speaker 1: to about half the length of any given wavelength for
Speaker 1: the light that's working with. Below that, it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: So you are limited in how small you can get
Speaker 1: with photonics. That's important to keep in mind because electronic
Speaker 1: components have already reached to below that size. We're talking
Speaker 1: about forty five nanometers. So if we can only get
Speaker 1: these elements to be half the length or half the
Speaker 1: size of the wavelength, then we're limited at how small
Speaker 1: we can get these photonic components. Right. We can't get
Speaker 1: them any smaller than that. If you're talking about a
Speaker 1: couple hundred uh nanometers in wavelength, than a hundred nanometers
Speaker 1: as small as you can get, and we already have
Speaker 1: microprocessors that have smaller components than that on them. Which
Speaker 1: means that the photonics have to be better at processing
Speaker 1: information than the electronics are, or we have that plateau effect, right,
Speaker 1: we don't end up making progress. We either step backward
Speaker 1: or we're treading water. So that is one thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is that we may have a limit
Speaker 1: on how how many components we can cram into an
Speaker 1: electronic device. Now we may find better ways of engineering
Speaker 1: it so that we make better use of these physical
Speaker 1: properties of light, and therefore we get better efficiency and
Speaker 1: better processing power out of it. This again is that
Speaker 1: idea of optimizing what you have so that it works
Speaker 1: the best way possible. And frankly, we are still working
Speaker 1: on the basics here, so it may be that, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen years down the line, we are still coming up
Speaker 1: with new ways to manipulate light and make it more
Speaker 1: efficient for our our computing purposes, where we still have
Speaker 1: Moore's law going in full effect. It's just now it's
Speaker 1: applying to photonics, not electronics. It's also possible that we
Speaker 1: could just make a huge leap frog and go into
Speaker 1: like super crazy efficient computers, which really puts the pressure
Speaker 1: on those software engineers to to bloat it up key
Speaker 1: pace so many features that you hate. So like, let
Speaker 1: me show you how many different versions of comic sands
Speaker 1: we have in this word processing suite. I I just
Speaker 1: in the future, I imagine that all software, all native software,
Speaker 1: will just have a little streaming video box up at
Speaker 1: the top corner. Right. Yeah, Well another interesting I mean
Speaker 1: talk about getting into subjects where we are interested but
Speaker 1: ultimately don't really understand. I want to talk about um spasers, spasers. Spasers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's spasers. It stands for surface plasma amplification by stimulated
Speaker 1: emission of radiation, which I clears it all up, doesn't it. Yes,
Speaker 1: So technically these are not nanoscale lasers, although that that
Speaker 1: is often how they are referred to. Uh, they are
Speaker 1: a think of it as an interface that exchanges a
Speaker 1: resonating electron for photon and vice versa. And so you have, uh,
Speaker 1: you have this this component that sends resoning electrons through
Speaker 1: a substrate. Substrate is basically your foundation through which all
Speaker 1: stuff can travel. It's it's kind of like the basis
Speaker 1: that you build upon. So in general, spasers, which have
Speaker 1: been worked on for years, were only able to use
Speaker 1: things like quantum dots, which pretty uh pretty exotic material
Speaker 1: you could say, or um, precious metals that have been
Speaker 1: reduced to nanoparticle size in order to have this resonating
Speaker 1: electron be useful in any way, not terribly practical when
Speaker 1: you want to come to like a large scale computing industry.
Speaker 1: But recent work over at Monash University's Department of Electrical
Speaker 1: and Computer Systems Engineering made a substrate from graphing one
Speaker 1: of our favorite materials, that's the sheet of carbon atoms
Speaker 1: that it's one atom thick oh carbon. And also, can
Speaker 1: you guess what the resonator is if the substrate is graphing,
Speaker 1: what could the resonator be? You got it in one, dude,
Speaker 1: I didn't even put it in the notes. And yes,
Speaker 1: in fact, carbon nanotube and graphing pairing is what allows
Speaker 1: this stuff to work. Uh So, the cool part about
Speaker 1: this is that it could, in fact, assuming that we
Speaker 1: find really efficient ways of of manufacturing graphing and carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: be a great advance in a basic photonic element that
Speaker 1: could make this kind of future of shot income. True, um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you have to rely so much on
Speaker 1: these other more exotic materials, but you know that's still
Speaker 1: years down the line before we get to a point
Speaker 1: where that's that's something that is readily manufacturable, but it
Speaker 1: does hold promise. Now, we've already talked on this podcast
Speaker 1: before about another type of alternative to your standard old
Speaker 1: school electronic computer, which is quantum computers. I wonder is
Speaker 1: the photonic computer going to be something that operates alongside
Speaker 1: a quantum computer or helps us build a quantum computer.
Speaker 1: There are or or what there are? Certain um There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different implementations of quantum computers, at
Speaker 1: least on paper, that would rely on photonics, that would
Speaker 1: use photons in various ways to encode information. You might
Speaker 1: remember we had our Cryptically Quantum episode which published on
Speaker 1: June fourteen. That was the one where we talked about
Speaker 1: quantum crypto aography being able almost did and I stopped myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still do that, and I know it's wrong. Keep
Speaker 1: telling me that's wrong, people, because that's the only way
Speaker 1: I'm gonna learn. Uh. No, quantum cryptography where you use
Speaker 1: the different polarizations of light in order to create a
Speaker 1: private key and share it with someone else. Uh, photonics
Speaker 1: are going to play a big role in that. We
Speaker 1: talked about how it kind of has limitations right now,
Speaker 1: but improvements in photonics could see us developed that further
Speaker 1: so that you can actually use that on a wide
Speaker 1: network as opposed to uh, kind of regionally locked within
Speaker 1: a certain a certain number of kilometers. I think it
Speaker 1: was thirty kilometers before I started to fall apart. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, it could come down to their just basic
Speaker 1: laws of quantum physics that we can't get around, and
Speaker 1: then in that case it may be a limiting factor,
Speaker 1: or it will be a limiting factor, but we don't
Speaker 1: know that yet. We also talked about quantum computers in
Speaker 1: an episode called from Cubert to Cubits, which is published
Speaker 1: onto Smerwyn't thirteen. So I think that was just about
Speaker 1: quantum computers, wouldn't it. I remember one of the things
Speaker 1: we talked about is that quantum computers might not They
Speaker 1: might be very very useful for certain types of tasks,
Speaker 1: but in other ways might not really offer any advantages
Speaker 1: over a traditional computer. So it's not like necessarily every
Speaker 1: computer in the future is going to be a quantum computer.
Speaker 1: Quantum computers are really good for certain types of computer problems, UH,
Speaker 1: computer problems that can be divided up and solved in
Speaker 1: parallel in particular, would be ideal for quantum computers. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that they can solve very, very rapidly.
Speaker 1: It's the stuff that classical computers tend to have a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble doing. You have to usually add more
Speaker 1: computer cores processing cores, whether it's a multi core processor
Speaker 1: or networking a bunch of computers together to work on
Speaker 1: a problem. It's usually the approach you have to take
Speaker 1: in order to make something like that, uh take, you know,
Speaker 1: not require an unreasonable amount of time to solve the problem.
Speaker 1: Quantum computers are very good for that. They're not so
Speaker 1: good for basic computing. I mean they perform like a
Speaker 1: regular classic computer. And the number of cubits those are
Speaker 1: quantum bits that your quantum computer has determines its ability
Speaker 1: of how how well does it solve these huge problems.
Speaker 1: But while you can get away with relatively few cubits
Speaker 1: compared to the the processing power you've seen in a
Speaker 1: classical computer and still tackle those huge problems, it would
Speaker 1: mean to be a pretty slow computer for anything like
Speaker 1: I don't know, playing the latest Call of Duty. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be any better. In fact, it probably be worse
Speaker 1: than your general like off the shelf PC, Well, what
Speaker 1: a rip off? Stopped developing these things. But look, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that this thing that could render all existing cryptography
Speaker 1: useless isn't uh, isn't good enough for you to play,
Speaker 1: you know, your first person shoter. I apologize. Okay. So
Speaker 1: if we were able to build powerful photonic computers and
Speaker 1: sort of that could compete with good electronic computers, how
Speaker 1: would they compare in terms of energy efficiency? That's a
Speaker 1: great question, and it's one that's really hard to answer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Until recently, the general consensus was that a photonic computer
Speaker 1: would require as much power, if not more power, than
Speaker 1: a comparable electronic machine. So it would mean that in
Speaker 1: some senses it would be inferior to an electronic computer
Speaker 1: because you would actually have to to feed it more power.
Speaker 1: But there are more recent reports on developments and photonic
Speaker 1: technologies that suggests that perhaps it could be very power efficient,
Speaker 1: maybe more so than electronic computers. So it may be
Speaker 1: that the photonic computers we get down the line, assuming
Speaker 1: that this all works out, will actually require less power
Speaker 1: than a you know, a comparable electronic computer, or maybe
Speaker 1: there is no elect comparable electronic computer. Maybe that the
Speaker 1: photonic com eaters are so efficient and so great at
Speaker 1: a processing that there's nothing in our electronic world that
Speaker 1: compares to it. It's too early to say. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I want to ask a sort of prediction question, but
Speaker 1: this might actually have a pretty solid answer. Imagine we
Speaker 1: make the transition to photonic computers. Does that mean More's
Speaker 1: law can go on forever? Again? Hard to say. It
Speaker 1: would mostly depend upon again learning the best way to
Speaker 1: manipulate that light. Because we are limited by physics, we
Speaker 1: cannot make those components smaller and smaller and smaller. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're limited by the wavelengths of light. Just with electricity,
Speaker 1: we're limited by how small each individual component can become
Speaker 1: before we start having electrical leakage. We are limited with
Speaker 1: how small we can make photonic components before you no
Speaker 1: longer can manipulate the light itself because the wavelengths are
Speaker 1: too long. Which is hard to imagine that a wavelength
Speaker 1: of light would be too long to manipulate, but in fact,
Speaker 1: if you get down to that level, it becomes that
Speaker 1: way you could switch. You can make an ultra violet laser.
Speaker 1: Ultra Violet light has incredibly small wavelengths, and we do
Speaker 1: have ultra violet lasers excisor lasers, but UH to be
Speaker 1: able to translate that over the photonics would require a
Speaker 1: lot of work. What you're saying is eventually we're going
Speaker 1: to need to have gamma ray computers. I think eventually. Eventually,
Speaker 1: once we get down to the maximum that we can, uh,
Speaker 1: we can exploit I guess that's the best word for it. Light,
Speaker 1: we'll either have to figure out an entirely different way
Speaker 1: to compute, or we'll just have to be satisfied that
Speaker 1: we've plateaued and we won't get any faster, which would
Speaker 1: mean that you know that that would have huge impact
Speaker 1: on multiple industries, right that you If you said this
Speaker 1: is this is as good as it can get because
Speaker 1: of the way our universe works, we literally cannot make
Speaker 1: it faster because we have hit the limitations of the
Speaker 1: universe itself. Then you you realize, well, we have to
Speaker 1: make do with what we have. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the future won't still be amazing. It just might take
Speaker 1: longer to get here. You know what I've just figured out.
Speaker 1: So all those old sci fi movies that we laugh
Speaker 1: at now that picture the future with people using these
Speaker 1: gigantic building sized computers. They were actually right, because what
Speaker 1: they're imagining is we reached the end of Moore's law,
Speaker 1: but pages law continued, and in order to keep up
Speaker 1: with the bloated software of the future, you had to
Speaker 1: make computers bigger and bigger and bigger, and there we go.
Speaker 1: So that's the thing, is that that in the short
Speaker 1: term we might see this kind of technology work its
Speaker 1: way into brand new form factors. I saw one that said,
Speaker 1: just imagine that you've turned your shirt into a cell phone.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't want to imagine that, But okay,
Speaker 1: I guess that would be possible using this particular modality.
Speaker 1: Um So, assuming that that future does happen, even then
Speaker 1: we'll get to a point where we can't go any further.
Speaker 1: We'll just be we'll hit that that hard wall of
Speaker 1: physics where we cannot you know, you cannot break the
Speaker 1: laws of physics, as as Scotty has said repeatedly, at
Speaker 1: least in my head. So yeah, it's possible that we'll
Speaker 1: see either a huge jump beyond what Moore's law would predict,
Speaker 1: assuming that photonics ends up working out and we can
Speaker 1: build practical systems based upon that we can see an
Speaker 1: enormous leap ahead. We could have this time where we
Speaker 1: have the parallel development of electronic and photonic until we
Speaker 1: get to a point where we have to make the switch,
Speaker 1: or it may just be that it doesn't work out
Speaker 1: and we'll have to figure out something else. Well, what
Speaker 1: else is there? Well, one approach could be to look
Speaker 1: into designing three dimensional microprocessors. So if you look at
Speaker 1: a microchip right now, you're essentially looking at a two
Speaker 1: dimensional landscape. It's effectively two dimensional, though you're talking about
Speaker 1: the quantum size, Like the quantum level is so in
Speaker 1: in play that you can treat it as a two
Speaker 1: dimensional system. It's two dimensional in the way that old
Speaker 1: school printing is two dimensional printing. I mean, you're still
Speaker 1: a piece of paper is three dimensional, but sure that
Speaker 1: a piece of paper also is enormously thick compared to
Speaker 1: a nanometer. So you're talking about you're talking about something
Speaker 1: that is so thin it is hard to imagine. Don't
Speaker 1: activate my my pedantic powers, Jonathan. Look, if you had
Speaker 1: it still has a depth dimension, if you had a
Speaker 1: line of atoms across, that would be one dimensional. That's
Speaker 1: how we're talking like super super super small stuff. So anyway,
Speaker 1: you essentially have a two dimensional playing field to work with.
Speaker 1: You know, you have the the the surface area of
Speaker 1: the micro chip, which you don't want to make larger
Speaker 1: because that would mean that you would have to start
Speaker 1: making devices larger, right like your phone would have to
Speaker 1: get bigger in size, Not like that hasn't happened already,
Speaker 1: but it would have to get bigger in size in
Speaker 1: order to fit more components on. Once we reach that fundamental,
Speaker 1: you cannot make components any smaller than this because it
Speaker 1: doesn't help the efficiency. So if you did three dimensional
Speaker 1: where you were able to stack these components in multiple
Speaker 1: ways so that it's not just a two dimensional space
Speaker 1: to play in, you could really increase the amount of
Speaker 1: UH of options you have and make Moore's law continue
Speaker 1: at least as long as you are able to still
Speaker 1: create a good architecture that works in three dimensions. And
Speaker 1: there are there are companies that are making three dimensional transistors,
Speaker 1: three dimensional gates that work in this way. UM no
Speaker 1: telling how much of a stop gap that would be,
Speaker 1: Like how how many more years would this extend More's law?
Speaker 1: Don't know, but it is It is really worth noting
Speaker 1: that engineers have found creative ways to keep Moore's law
Speaker 1: going well beyond what people expected, just based upon redesigning
Speaker 1: the architecture of the microprocessor itself, not necessarily saying let's
Speaker 1: get things even smaller and cram more of them on here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't want this to be like Doom
Speaker 1: and Gloom. That's far from it. The interesting thing here
Speaker 1: is that we've got this enormous engineering challenge and there's
Speaker 1: so many different people looking at ways to meet it.
Speaker 1: I think they'll figure it out. Yeah, well, they're smarter
Speaker 1: than we are, so I have faith. Anyway, that wraps
Speaker 1: up our discussion about optical computers and photonics. If you
Speaker 1: guys have any questions, or perhaps you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, we received one today in fact that we're
Speaker 1: looking at uh, you should send us a message let
Speaker 1: us know why you would like to hear. Tell us
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus. So handled all
Speaker 1: three is f W thinking and we'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this topic in the
Speaker 1: future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to
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