News Item Dated: 07 October 2002
From: Poptronics (10/02) Vol. 3, No. 10, P. 12; Pietromonaco, Peter

Optical technology promises massive upgrades in the efficiency and speed of computers, as well as significant shrinkage in their size and cost. The major challenge is finding materials that can be mass produced yet consume little power; for this reason, optical computers may not hit the consumer market for 10 to 15 years. An optical desktop computer could be capable of processing data up to 100,000 times faster than current models because multiple operations can be performed simultaneously. Other advantages of optics include low manufacturing costs, immunity to electromagnetic interference, a tolerance for low-loss transmissions, freedom from short electrical circuits, and the capability to supply large bandwidth and propagate signals within the same or adjacent fibers without interference.

NASA's Dr. Hossin Abdeldayem maintains that optical computing will bypass current bandwidth limitations and accommodate the Internet's growth rate. By demonstrating that photonic storage is possible, researchers have rekindled interest in optical computing, according to Majari Mehta of the University of Houston's Information Systems Research Center. Dr. Donald Frazier of NASA reports that his agency is concentrating on thin films of organic molecules as optical components, and he believes that the current organic/inorganic hybrid systems are an intermediate step to all-optical computers.