<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>morphle</author><text>Yes, basic physics shows [1] that we can use (free space) optics instead of wires inside chips. This will improve energy use and speeds by 3 orders of magnitude. Next to a transistor you put a photon detector. You can flip the transistor with the voltage from the photon detector by sending 10000 photons (or less). Pictures of such systems in the slides [2].&lt;p&gt;We can beam billions of optical channels with different frequencies in parallel across chips, exabits (yettabits, yottabits) per second.&lt;p&gt;We will not compute with photons tough [4][5], the optical structures are to large and it would only work for very specific types of computations.&lt;p&gt;We design wafer scale integrations (very large chips) this way we can start making these fast on-chip interconnects around 2027 if we invest a few billion today in making free space optics. A layman&amp;#x27;s introduction in my talk here [3].&lt;p&gt;[1] Stanford Seminar - Saving energy and increasing density in information processing using photonics - David B. Miller &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7hWWyuesmhs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7hWWyuesmhs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;profile&amp;#x2F;David-Miller-65&amp;#x2F;publication&amp;#x2F;344585772_Saving_energy_and_increasing_density_in_information_processing_using_photonics&amp;#x2F;links&amp;#x2F;5f81e682a6fdccfd7b565f87&amp;#x2F;Saving-energy-and-increasing-density-in-information-processing-using-photonics.pdf?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;profile&amp;#x2F;David-Miller-65&amp;#x2F;publica...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] Smalltalk and Self Hardware &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;731037615&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;vimeo.com&amp;#x2F;731037615&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] D. A. B. Miller, “Are optical transistors the logical next step?” Nature Photonics, vol. 4, pp. 3–5, 2010.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;profile&amp;#x2F;David-Miller-65&amp;#x2F;publication&amp;#x2F;40764874_Are_optical_transistors_the_logical_next_step&amp;#x2F;links&amp;#x2F;0fcfd5072ec68dae82000000&amp;#x2F;Are-optical-transistors-the-logical-next-step.pdf?origin=journalDetail&amp;amp;_tp=eyJwYWdlIjoiam91cm5hbERldGFpbCJ9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.researchgate.net&amp;#x2F;profile&amp;#x2F;David-Miller-65&amp;#x2F;publica...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[5] Attojoule Optoelectronics for Low-Energy Information Processing and Communications – a Tutorial Review &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1609.05510.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;1609.05510.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>I know basically nothing about computer engineering or electronics, so bare with me on this, but conceivably could tech like this be used &lt;i&gt;inside&lt;/i&gt; a computer?&lt;p&gt;As in, instead of just using fiber to make different computers talk to each other really fast, could we use it for like a RAM bus or something? Is there too much latency associated with it compared to the copper we&amp;#x27;ve been using? 301 Tbps seems like insane speeds, even inside a computer.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Fiber-optic data transfer speeds hit a rapid 301 Tbps</title><url>https://www.livescience.com/technology/communications/fiber-optic-data-transfer-speeds-hit-a-rapid-301-tbps-12-million-times-faster-than-your-home-broadband-connection</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>486sx33</author><text>The biggest problem I see from 10,000 feet is you’d need to constantly be converting electricity to light and back again… there is a penalty for that in speed… so far putting ram on die with the cpu has been the best way to reduce that particular form of latency…</text><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>I know basically nothing about computer engineering or electronics, so bare with me on this, but conceivably could tech like this be used &lt;i&gt;inside&lt;/i&gt; a computer?&lt;p&gt;As in, instead of just using fiber to make different computers talk to each other really fast, could we use it for like a RAM bus or something? Is there too much latency associated with it compared to the copper we&amp;#x27;ve been using? 301 Tbps seems like insane speeds, even inside a computer.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Fiber-optic data transfer speeds hit a rapid 301 Tbps</title><url>https://www.livescience.com/technology/communications/fiber-optic-data-transfer-speeds-hit-a-rapid-301-tbps-12-million-times-faster-than-your-home-broadband-connection</url></story>