¡@ Soon,
there is absolutely no need for compact disc. You only need to store the photons and
retrieve certain information by picking up a particular photon with magnetic field line.
It provides greater storage capacity than ten million CD or magnetic disc because it is
not limited by space. Lecturer ¡þ Sun-Don Lee For
the semiconductor industry, what started out as a cute description of a technology trend
has become something like a force of nature. It is called Moore's law. Ever since 1975,
the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip has doubled roughly every 18 months,
enabling microprocessors and memories to get larger, faster and more complex and far
cheaper. Powering this trend is the shrinking of transistors with each chip generation.
This rapid diminution of microelectronics makes possible today's information revolution.
But this joyride can't continue forever ---- at least not with the current technology now
in use or under development to make the electronics or the likes (i.e. electronic gates,
optical interconnections, and even more innovative devices). CURRENT COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES What human being can anticipate now is trying to explore the very small scale: the world where individual atoms and molecules rule. Building at this tiny scale is called nanotechnology/nanoscience. It is said that we would be able to squeeze not just millions but billions of transistors onto one chip. In the mean time human being has gone far beyond regular electronics. Researches such as optical communications, photonics, as well as ways to probe individual cells are getting hot. People are trying to push the computing power into the limit from advances in those areas. As a quick survey of the current research areas of this nanotechnology, we would find : Improvement on optical lithography, copper interconnects, silicon-on-insulator, and silicon germanium to increase the transistor switching speed for current semiconductor manufacturing technology. People are also exploring the following possibilities of the future: Quantum Computing, Optical Computing, and DNA Computing. Quantum computing is designed by taking advantage of nuclear magnetic resonance. The encoding principle is quantum effect. A quantum computer promises to be immensely powerful because it can be in multiple states at once and because it can act on all its possible states simultaneously. Thus using a single processing unit, we can perform myriad operations in parallel. Similarly, DNA, a long chain molecule of the four bases: adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine (represented by the letters A, T, G and C) can be used to store information very efficiently and to perform computations simultaneously. It is in this massive parallelism that the strength of DNA computing lies. Finally one of the main incentives for developing optical computing is that light beams can propagate very close to each other or even intersect with little cross talk, so massive parallel data links can be made. Even though current research is being done to prolong the growth predicted by Moor's law, physical limitations will eventually lead a drastic change in the fundamentals of information processing and storage technology. The major drawback of current technologies and research directions is that they all utilize some kind of physical media to store, to process and to transmit information. Though optical computing indeed uses light itself to transmit data but it generally use some other substance to store data or sometimes even rely electronics to process data digitally in the CPU core. Can we use some kind of formless media to accomplish the whole task much more efficiently (i.e. computation, storage and transport)? The only candidate seems to be the photon which is in pure energy form. Master Lee briefly described many of its interesting properties and showed how to utilize it in the following paragraph.
Bill Gates, the current President of US Microsoft Computer Co. once mentioned Digital Neural Network. In terms of technology, it mimics the communicative function of human nervous system. It will be of not much use! What I foresee about the computer development of 21st century is much more advanced than this one! In computer technologies that humans have currently developed, any data transmission relies on physical substances. No matter how we make robots, digital neural networks, or how close to human brains they may get, all of them still have to rely on transmission, right? Up till now, even optical fiber needs to go through transmission line. If one day we can work without transmitting media, that is going to be the real high tech! Photon and electron, which one is faster? Sure, it is photon! Electron has to go through physical media to conduct electricity. Not for photon! In developing future computer, we can have information processing and transmission not only rely on electron but also on photon, that will be something really inconceivable! It then might turn all computers today into rubbish! The only drawback of photon is that it is particle-like and normally moves in straight line and will not circle around. We only need to set up a triangle satellite or a octagon satellite on earth orbit emitting photon throughout the space, all information systems of the world can be completely destroyed. "Photon" does not need any transmitting media and can be transmitted even in vacuum. It takes but only a second of photons to send out tens of billions of informations. When electron is used, it will consume a great deal of electricity to conduct continuous transmission but not for photon. Thus, man do not need any more of the nuclear power plant. They are too wasteful and dangerous as well! The same concept can be applied to television. A photon is emitted to each pixel at a speed of 24 pixels per second. There is absolutely no need for the current CRT display. Photon moves in the universe and has never worn out. Our universe existed for at least fifteen billion light years. Photon has been moving all around through the universe until now and has neither been damaged nor diminished. All information is still kept within itself. What is photon? A form in the unity of time and space that does not need any materials for recording. Soon, there is absolutely no need for compact disc. The information could be recorded in different frequencies or at different polarized angles. You only need to store the photons and retrieve certain information by picking up a particular photon with magnetic field line. A photon may be ten trillionth meter, too minute to be detected by naked eyes, or even electronic microscope. However, it provides greater storage capacity than ten million CD or magnetic disc because it is not limited by space. I predict
that within five years people will bring forth this idea as I mentioned above. However,
with the current technologies, none is able to implement this idea, let alone such an idea
has not even occurred to anyone yet.
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