Why in news?
Researchers at Tampere University in Finland and Université Marie et Louis Pasteur in France demonstrated that intense light pulses travelling through optical fibres can perform artificial‑intelligence tasks faster and with lower energy use than conventional electronic computers.
What are optical computers?
Optical or photonic computers use light instead of electricity to process and transmit data. Because photons travel faster and generate less heat than electrons, such systems promise ultra‑fast, energy‑efficient computation.
How do they work?
- Data (e.g., an image) is converted into a light pulse and sent through an optical fibre.
- The fibre’s non‑linear properties transform the light pulse in ways that can encode complex operations, such as recognising patterns.
- The altered light (its colour spectrum or “fingerprint”) is decoded at the output to obtain the result.
Key characteristics
- Speed: Light travels faster than electricity, enabling near‑instant computations.
- Efficiency: Optical systems generate little heat and use less power than silicon chips.
- Parallel processing: Different colours of light can carry separate streams of information simultaneously.
- Accuracy: Experiments achieved over 91–93 per cent success in image recognition tasks.
Applications
Optical computing could transform artificial intelligence, supercomputing, telecommunications and defence by providing faster and greener data processing. Scaling up such systems remains a challenge, but the research demonstrates the potential of using light for complex calculations.