General Colloquium:
February 10 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)

Dr. R. S. Lytel
Distinguished Engineer
Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Title: "Light Matters: The Use of Photons in Computing Environments"

ABSTRACT:

There are of order one hundred undersea cables carrying telephony around the world. A typical transcontinental optical fiber now carries of order 100 Gbps of traffic, and this is well below its fundamental data carrying capacity. There are probably optical fibers in your neighborhood carrying your phone calls, DSL traffic, and cable channels. Why are there no optical devices in your computer? Scaling of computer systems will determine when optics gets implemented. The talk examines scaling of Silicon-based computers to determine where and when optics will be utilized. The implications of scaling for more exotic technologies, such as molecular electronics and quantum computation, will also be described.