WHAT IS OPTICAL

COMPUTING?
Optical Computing is that computing strategy in which the
computer or processing unit performs computations & other
operations, stores & transmits data using only light.

Electronic
To Photonic
Converter
Text
format Fibre optic
cables
Electrons  Photons

Mouse  Optical Mouse

Keyboard  Optical Keyboard

Metallic Wires  Optical Fibre Cables

Processor  Optical Processor

Monitor  Optical Display

Buses  Optical Buses

Electronic Logic Gates  Optical Logic Gates

 WHY OPTICAL COMPUTING?

 In silicon computers, the speed of computers was

achieved by miniaturizing electronic components.

 It is also estimated that the number of transistor

switches that can be put onto a chip doubles every 18 months.

 So further miniaturization of size introduces several

problems such as dielectric breakdown, hot carriers, and short
channel effects etc.

 In electronic computer the solid state transmission

media limits both the speed and volume of signal.

 Optical technology promises massive upgrades in the

efficiency and speed of computers, as well as significant
shrinkage in their size and cost.
 CONTINUED…

 Light travel 10 time faster than electron. So using light the

data transmission rate can be increased .

 Optical data processing can be done as parallel

processes.

 Parallelism is the capability of the system to execute more

than one operation simultaneously.

 Optical materials have a superior storage density and

accessibility over magnetic materials.
An optical computer is a device that uses the photons in
visible light or infrared (IR) beams, rather than electric
current, to perform digital computations.
 HOW DOES IT WORK?
 Light(Photon) in the place of electron.

 Uses optical components like Optical Transistor, Optical

Gate and Switch, Holographic Memory, Input Output Devices
etc.

 Transistors, logic gates etc are simulated using optics.

 There are switches that are activated by beams of light

rather than by pulse of electricity.

 All-optical components require a high level of laser

power to function as required.

 Send pulses of light instead of pulses of electricity

 ADVANTAGES
 Increase in the speed of computation.

 Immune to electromagnetic interference.

 Free from electrical short circuits.

 Have low-loss transmission and large bandwidth.

 Capable of communicating several channels in parallel

without interference.

 Possess superior storage density and accessibility

 No power loss due to excess of heating.

 Life of the hardware of optical computer is more.

OPTICAL CROSSOVERS
PARALLEL COMMUNICATION
 OPTICAL COMPONENTS

VCSEL- Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Micro Laser

 Semiconductor vertical cavity surface emitting laser diode.

 Emits light in a cylindrical beam vertically from the surface
of a fabricated wafer.
 VCSEL - continued

 Offers significant advantages when compared to the

edge-emitting lasers.

 Two special semiconductor materials  an active layer.

 Several layers of partially reflective mirrors above and

below the active layer.

 Each mirror reflects a narrow range of wavelengths back

in to the cavity.

 Cause light emission at just one wavelength.

 Polymer waveguide.
 PHOTODIODE

 A type of photo detector capable of converting light

into either current or voltage.

 Similar to PN junction diode.

 When a photon of sufficient energy strikes the diode, it
excites an electron.

 Creates a free electron and a hole.

 If the absorption occurs in the junction's depletion

region, or one diffusion length away from it,

 these carriers are swept from the junction by the built-

in field of the depletion region.

 Thus holes move toward the anode, and electrons

toward the cathode, and a photocurrent is produced.
OPTICAL INTERCONNECTION OF CIRCUIT BOARDS USING
VCSEL AND PHOTODIODE
 PHOTONIC CRYSTALS
 Crystals designed to replace transistors in optical
computers.

 Optical nanostructures that are designed to affect the

motion of photons.
Wave Propagation at frequencies below the band
gap

Wave propagation at frequencies in the band gap

Wave Propagation at frequencies above the band
gap
3D optical waveguide
Photonic Crystal with line defect
Photonic crystal with a bend defect
 SLM- Spatial Light Modulator

 SLMs play an important role in optical processing, for

inputting information on light beams, and displays.

 A set of memory cells laid out on a regular grid and

value in each cell contribute to manipulate the behaviour of
optical activity.

 Cells are electrically connected to metal mirrors, such

that the voltage on the mirror depends on the value stored
in the memory cell.
 SLM modulates the intensity and phase of the light
beam.

 SLMs are used extensively in holographic data storage

setups to encode information into a laser beam.
 SMART PIXELS

 Smart pixels, the union of optics and electronics.

 Expands the capabilities of electronic systems and enables

optical systems with high levels of electronic signal
processing.

 The electronic circuitry provides complex functionality and

programmability

 The optoelectronic devices provide high-speed switching.

 Some examples
o LED- Light Emitting Diode under the control of a FET-
Field Effect Transistor.
 LOGIC GATES

 Logic gates are the building blocks of any digital system.

 An optical logic gate is a switch that controls one light

beam with another.

 It is "on" when the device transmits light, and "off" when it

blocks the light.
 USE OF OPTICS IN COMPUTING

 Optical fibres are used to communicate internally; like

communicating with peripherals etc.

 The use of free-space optical interconnects as a potential

solution to alleviate bottlenecks experienced in electronic.

 Optical sorting and optical crossbar inter-connects are used

in asynchronous transfer modes.
 “Moore’s Gap”

Tiled Multicore ors

1000 i st The
n s Moore’s
a
100
Multicore
Tr Gap

10
1
 Diminishing returns from
single CPU mechanisms
0.1 (pipelining, caching, etc.)
 Wire delays
0.01  Power envelopes

time
1992 1998 2002 2006 2010
 Multicore Scaling Trends
Today
Tomorrow
A few large cores on each chip 100’s to 1000’s of simpler
cores [S. Borkar, Intel, 2007]
Diminishing returns prevent
Simple cores are more power
cores from getting more complex
and area efficient
Only option for future scaling is Global structures do not scale;
to add more cores all resources must be
distributed
Still some shared global
structures: bus, L2 caches

m m m m
p p p p
p p switch switch switch switch

m m m m
p p p p
c c switch switch switch switch

m m m m
BUS p p p p
switch switch switch switch

m m m m
L2 Cache p p p p
switch switch switch switch
 The Future of Multicore
Number of cores doubles Parallelism replaces
every 18 months clock frequency
scaling and core
complexity

Resulting
Challenges…

Scalability
Programming
Power

MIT RAW Sun Ultrasparc T2 IBM XCell 8i Tilera TILE64

 Multicore Challenges
 Scalability
– How do we turn additional cores into additional performance?
• Must accelerate single apps, not just run more apps in parallel
• Efficient core-to-core communication is crucial
– Architectures that grow easily with each new technology generation

 Programming
– Traditional parallel programming techniques are hard
– Parallel machines were rare and used only by rocket scientists
– Multicores are ubiquitous and must be programmable by anyone

 Power
– Already a first-order design constraint
– More cores and more communication  more power
– Previous tricks (e.g. lower Vdd) are running out of steam
Multicore Communication Today
Bus-based Interconnect

Single shared resource

p p

c c
Uniform communication cost
BUS
Communication through memory
L2 Cache
Doesn’t scale to many cores due to
contention and long wires

Scalable up to about 8 cores

DRAM
Multicore Communication Tomorrow

Point-to-Point Mesh Network

m m m m
p p p p Examples: MIT Raw, Tilera
m
switch

m
switch

m
switch

m
switch
TILEPro64, Intel Terascale
p
switch
p
switch
p
switch
p
switch
Prototype
m
p
m
p
m
p
m
p
Neighboring tiles are connected
switch switch switch switch

m m m m Distributed communication
p
switch
p
switch
p
switch
p
switch
resources
Non-uniform costs:
Latency depends on distance
Encourages direct
DRAM

DRAM

DRAM

DRAM

communication
More energy efficient than bus
Scalable to hundreds of cores
 Improving Programmability
Observations:


A cheap broadcast communication mechanism can make
programming easier
– Enables convenient programming models (e.g., shared
memory)
– Reduces the need to carefully manage locality


On-chip optical components enable cheap, energy-efficient
broadcast
 ATAC Architecture
Electrical Mesh Interconnect

m m m m

p p p p

switch switch switch switch

m m m m

p p p p

switch switch switch switch

m m m m

p p p p

switch switch switch switch

m m m m

p p p p

switch switch switch switch

Optical Broadcast WDM

Interconnect
Optical Broadcast Network
 Waveguide passes
through every core
 Multiple wavelengths
(WDM) eliminates
contention
 Signal reaches all
cores in <2ns
 Same signal can be
received by all cores

optical waveguide
 Optical Broadcast Network
 Electronic-
photonic
integration using
standard CMOS
N cores process
 Cores
communicate via
optical WDM
broadcast and
select network
 Each core sends
on its own
dedicated
wavelength using
modulators
 Cores can receive
from some set of
senders using
optical filters
 Optical bit transmission
 Each core sends data using a different wavelength  no
contention
 Data is sent once, any or all cores can receive it  efficient
broadcast

multi-wavelength source waveguide

modulator

data waveguide

modulator filter transimpedance

driver
amplifier
photodetector

flip-flop flip-flop

sending core receiving core

 Core-to-core communication
 32-bit data words transmitted across several parallel
waveguides
 Each core contains receive filters and a FIFO buffer for every
sender
 Data is buffered at receiver until needed by the processing
core
 Receiver can screen data by sender (i.e. wavelength) or
message type

32 32

FIFO

FIFO

FIFO

FIFO
FIFO FIFO

32 32

Processor Processor
Core Core Processor Core

sending core sending core receiving core

A B
 Communication-centric Computing
 ATAC reduces off-chip memory calls, and hence energy and
latency

 View of extended global memory can be enabled cheaply

with on-chip distributed cache memory and ATAC network
Operation Energy Latency
memory
500pJ 3pJ Network 3pJ 3 cycles
500pJ transfer
500pJ 500pJ

p p 3pJ
ALU add 2pJ 1 cycle
operation
c 3pJ
c
32KB cache 50pJ 1 cycle
BUS 3pJ
read
L2 Cache
Off-chip 500pJ 250
memory cycles
Bus-Based ATAC read
Multicore
 OPTICAL INPUT DEVICES
Optical
Mouse

 An optoelectronic sensor to take successive pictures of

the surface on which the mouse operates
 A small LED provides light underneath the mouse,
helping to highlight slight differences in the surface
underneath the mouse.
 Those differences are reflected back into the camera,
where digital processing is used to compare the pictures
and determine the speed and direction of movement.
Optical Mice
 Optical
Keyboard
 It can be projected and
touched on any surface.

 A sensor or camera in the

projector picks up finger
movements.

 The camera associated

with the detector detects co-
ordinates and determine
actions or characters to be
generated.
 Optical Keyboard

Virtual Keyboard
Optical Microphone
Optical Microphone- continued…

 The main principle of the optical microphone is to detect

the vibration of a membrane using light.

 When sound waves agitate the membrane it starts to

vibrate, resulting in a toggling of the light spot on the
receiving fiber.

 Consequentially a different intensity can be detected at

the photo diode and is transformed into an electrical signal.
 OPTICAL OUTPUT
DEVICES
Laser Printer
LCD display
Optical Projector
 The RGB output from some
other device (usually a
computer) forms the RGB input
to the projector.

 This input controls the red,

green and blue coloured LASERs
in the projector.

 The LASER beams are mixed

on the micro-display (formed by
liquid crystal panel & dichroic
prism).

 The magnification lens pair

displays the magnified image on
to some surface as per need.
 TYPES OF OPTICAL COMPUTER

Optical Analogue

These include 2-D Fourier transform, optical

correlators, and optical matrix-vector processors.

Optoelectronics

This type of computing device would be to

shorten the pulse delay in chips and other logic
elements by using optical interconnections.
 Optical parallel digital computers

These would use the inherent parallelism of optical

devices along
with digital electronics for flexibility.

Optical neural computer

Neural computers compute in the sense that they

have streams of
input and output bits. They do not require anything
resembling
ordinary programming, if programming is done at all it
is by
dynamically changing the degree to which the
individual nodes are
connected.
Few Examples of Optical Computing
 USE OF OPTICS IN MEMORY STORAGE
 Mass storage, which is implemented by optical disks or by
holographic storage systems.

 The primary benefits offered by holographic optical data

storage over current storage technologies include significantly
higher storage capacities and faster read-out rates.

 A holographic memory can store data in the form of a

hologram within a crystal.

 The analogue nature of these devices means that data can

be stored at much higher density than data written by
conventional devices.
Process of Memory Storage using Optical
Computing
Recording of data on to the Holographic
medium
Reading of data from the Holographic medium
 APPLICATIONS
 Optical Digital Signal Processing.

 Rocket Science.

 Process Satellite data.

 Optical crossbar interconnects are used in

asynchronous transfer modes and shared memory
multiprocessor systems.

 High speed communications.

 Multi-core processing.
 CHALLENGES

 Development technology.

 Fabrication technology.

 Cost devices and components.

 Software environment.
 CURRENT WORKS AND IMPROVEMENTS
By NASA

 The thin films being developed.

 Can perform switching, signal processing and frequency

doubling

THIN FILM TRANSISTOR

IBM milestone demonstrates optical device to advance
computer performance

 IBM announced that its researchers have built a device

capable of delaying the flow of light on a silicon chip, a
requirement to one day allow computers to utilize optical
communications to achieve better performance.
Era of High-Speed Optical Computing is Approaching by
Oregon State University

 OSU Department of Physics found that existing plasmonic

nanowires can be combined with a “gain material” – solid or
liquid luminescent media that emit light – to squeeze the light
to tiny areas, comparable in size with transistors in modern
processors, and to further control the speed of the light pulses
and manipulate them.
Brazilian Beetle Lights the Way for Optical
Computers of the Future

 University of Utah chemists determined the beetle

glows iridescent green because it evolved a crystal
structure in its scales that is like the crystal structure of
diamonds. Such a structure is considered an ideal
architecture for "photonic crystals".
Germanium Laser Breakthrough Brings Optical
Computing Closer
 Researchers at MIT.
 A germanium laser could, in principle, be built alongside
the rest of the
chip in the same factory.
 Eventually, MIT researchers believe germanium lasers
could be used
not just for communications,
but for the logic elements of the chips too —
helping to build computers that perform calculations using
light
instead of electricity.
 CONCLUSION
 Optical technology promises massive upgrades in the
efficiency and
speed of computers, as well as significant shrinkage in their
size and cost.

 Even though pure Optical computer has many challenges,

the hybrid
opto-electrical computer can be expected very soon, and in
near future
pure optical computer too.
ANY QUERIES??