In today’s offshore product development scenario there is growing dependence on computing technology, the need for high performance computers has significantly increased. With the help of virtual product design and development, costs can be reduced hence looking for improved computing capabilities are desirable. Photonic computing includes the Photonic calculation of transformation and Photonic pattern matching. Emerging technologies also make the Photonic storage of data a reality. Photonic desktop computer is capable of processing data up to 1,00,000 times faster than current models. Outsourced product development companies can gain a lot of efficiency by using Photonic computers.
Photonic computers use the transfer and manipulation of photons, which are pulses of light, as a means of transferring and performing calculations of data. For performing calculations, Photonic computers manipulate the flow of electrons through logic gates composed of transistors, which acts like switches – located in the computer’s Central Processing Unit. Photonic computers, like modern computers, works in a similar fashion in the sense that they both transfer and manipulate data in the form of bits, however, unlike traditional computers where bits are represented as electrons, Photonic computers represent bits in the form of photons. The Photonic computer uses only light to collect, retrieve, and process data. This makes it operate much faster than electronically based computers because information and processing occurs at the speed of light. Another key benefit of the Photonic computer is that less energy is used to power the system and it does not have the same interference problems that make it difficult for current chip manufacturers to make smaller transistors. This is because light energy does not interact with other photons. The processor itself is a laser inscribed piece of crystal made in the laboratory and the current system uses only a huge amount of RAM to store information. Although this system is complete, it is still very simple and not very useful.
Photonic computing is digital computing in replication of conventional electronic computing only using laser light instead of electricity and holograms instead of silicon computer chips. Photonic comes from photon which is the smallest unit of light just as an electron is the smallest unit of electricity. Photon comes from photo. Uninhibited light travels thousands of times faster than electrons in computer chips, therefore, it is capable of computing thousands of times faster than electronic computing. Therefore, light computers compute thousands of times faster than any electronic computer can ever due to the physical limitation differences between light and electricity.