| From: | "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@*******.MANKATO.MSUS.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Optical Chips and optical thinking |
| Date: | Sun, 11 Apr 93 17:59:55 CET |
This may or may not have anything to do with shadowrun, so all of you
non-geeks who care nothing about computer engineering can delete this posting.
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Imagine an optical chip.
Imagine that we get a powerful microscope and take a gander at it close up.
What you would see are a series of photo-sensitive cells.
--
Now, let's further imagine.
We have a computer that uses optical cells for processing. each of these
photo-sensitive cells are "written" to by a laser. There are four lasers
used to write to the cells. A red one, a green one, and a blue one. A
fourth laser (call it a clear one) is used to reset a cell to 0.
These three programming lasers allow one cell to contain any of eight states:
R G B
0 - - - Key:
1 X - - - = Laser not fired
2 - X - X = Laser fired
3 - - X
4 X X -
5 - X X
6 X - X
7 X X X
Now, with a series of cells, you can get a number (just like in binary).
Binary Optical
100= 1100100 144
128= 10000000 200
256= 100000000 400
etc....
As you can see, you can achieve a number with a much much smaller number
of bits (forgive me if my math is wrong).
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What am I talking about? I have no idea.
But with today's fiber-optic lines which transmit light, it would be very
easy to set up an optical communication net like you see above.
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Sorry, I just rambled. I'll stop now.
[> Robert Hayden ____ <] Black Holes result from God
[> \ /__ <] dividing the universe by zero.
[> hayden@*******.mankato.msus.edu \/ / <]
[> aq650@****.INS.CWRU.Edu \/ <] # include std_disclaimer.h
