Light-based computers are faster devices where data can move at the speed of light.
Tech giants, as IBM and Intel are currently trying to develop light-based computing, but they are still far from achieving their goal.
“With this special chip we can guide light and sound waves at the same time and we use this physical effect to make sound waves and light waves interact with each other and we are now able to harness this effect,” said Dr. Stiller, who supervises the whole project.
“We got some initial results about three years ago. We had to preserve the properties of light, including the frequency which corresponds to the color of light,” she explained.
Light-based or photonic computers have the potential to run at 20 or more times faster than the average laptop. Even better, won't produce heat or suck up energy like existing devices because they would process data in the form of photons instead of electrons.
When asked what makes their discovery so unique for humans, Dr. Stiller said that a light-based computer can be imagined as different processors connected by photonic wires, while the processor itself will remain electronic.
“Our method will connect certain elements of a computer through light wires. This is important because electronic wires do not offer the speed light wires do,” Stiller said.
She added that right now their group was at a research stage and that it would take some time before they have a working prototype.
"Light offers us much higher speed and capacity compared with electronic wires," Birgit Stiller said.
