Will the computer of the future be made without silicon?

Silicon is a key element in the manufacture of computers. Used for decades as the basis of electronic chips, researchers have now found an alternative to this element in optical fiber. A cable that would have the ability to overcome most of the limitations of traditional computing.

A new milestone may well have been reached in the world of computing. Do you know the silicon, this essential element in the electronics industry? Amineralknown for giving its name to the famous Silicon Valley ( silicon meaning silicon in English) and one of the most abundant elements on the planet. Amaterial solids, having properties of semiconductors, have become essential in the development of the majority of modern electronic devices. If this mineral is at the origin of the second generation of transistors developed in the 1950s, the key component of the electronic chips in our computer equipment, today, an international team of researchers would have succeeded in developing an operational computer without any silicon circuitry. A computer, which would work thanks to the light, guiding information through the optical fiber.

Silicon losing momentum

Optical computing could soon put an end to a technology that has demonstrated its effectiveness for decades, but which would be less and less capable of responding to the new challenges that present themselves to us. Not very ecological, silicon-based electronic chips are extremely energy-intensive. Greenpeace also warned last year about the consumption of energy in this industry, announcing that the semiconductor market could more than double its electricity consumption during this decade, reaching 247 TWh in 2030. No longer fast enough, silicon chips regularly have to face the creation of new ever more powerful processes such as artificial intelligence. Scientists have therefore been looking for alternatives for several years. 

The alternative: optical fiber

Thus, researchers would have focused on a booming new technology: photonic computing, which uses light to perform calculations and data processing tasks. Data such as images, sound, etc. would circulate inside the optical cable in the form of light pulses changing in colors while traveling through the fiber. The computer would then analyze these color combinations to understand and classify the information. According to the team behind this new method, this technology has achieved a precision rate never before matched by other analysis systems. Capable of carrying out very complex calculation operations while consuming much less energy than traditional electronic equipment, the researchers behind the study even imagine being able to soon place this technology within various portable devices.

Fiber: fast, strong, and green

The path of optical technology presents significant advantages on paper: higher storage density, the transmission of information to the speed of light, increased computing capacity, and above all a considerable reduction in energy used, fiber would have everything to make us dream. If certain material and mathematical elements have prevented the generalization of such technology in recent years, this innovation could soon be commercialized, and already be implemented in the configuration of current computers.