Researchers at Oxford University have developed the first photonic processor that uses light polarization to maximize density information storage and computing power.

Photonics has great advantages over electronics. And light is faster and more functional at high bandwidths. Several research projects are underway to exploit the properties of photonics in computers, as they are already used in other areas, such as telecommunications and computer networks.

Pre-biased photonic processor

To understand this research that has been published in Scientific advancesIt must be said that Light has an interesting and computationally usable feature. The different wavelengths of light do not interact and this is used, for example, in fiber optics for communication. Even the different polarizations of light do not interact. Each of them can be used as an independent information channel, which allows information to be stored in multiple channels.

Using this concept, the researchers developed the first photonic processor to use light polarization. They have to do that developed HAD (Hybridized Active Dielectric) nanowire using a material that exhibits switchable material properties when illuminated by optical pulses. Each nanowire responds selectively to a particular direction of polarization, so that information can be processed simultaneously by multiple polarizations in different directions.

The development improves the density by several orders of magnitude compared to conventional electronic chips. Computational speeds are higher because these nanowires are modulated by optical pulses that operate in nanoseconds. The new chip promises to more than 300 times faster and denser than current chips.

“This is just the beginning of what we would like to see in the future, which is the use of all the degrees of freedom that light offers, including polarization, to dramatically parallelize information processing.”, the researchers explain. The project is in the preparatory phase and will still need years of development, but there is interest in it.

Electronics, photonics and new materials

It must be said that the “Moore’s Law”, which defined the business strategy in the semiconductor industry, enabled the emergence of a microprocessor and later a personal computer, was the key to increasing density and with it the number of transistors and ultimately power.

Today it’s done, because materials (silicon) and current techniques can’t do more. And there is a need to constantly increase performance as well as manage functions such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which require specialized and more advanced hardware than today.

And if we can’t increase the number of transistors at the required speed, How to pack more functions in each of them?. The solution can be projects like this photonic processor, which uses the polarization characteristics of light.