The future of electronic devices lies in a source that existed, exists, and will always exist... in light!
What do scientists mean?
Tensor operations (tensor operations) are the “heart” of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
These are mathematical computations that allow neural networks to recognize faces, understand speech, and even defeat top chess players.
But the problem is that classical computers (even GPUs) are finding it increasingly difficult:
1) Speed drops (billions of operations require seconds).
2) Energy consumption skyrockets (entire data centers burn huge amounts of electricity).
3) Scaling is difficult (the more servers you add, the more the cost increases).
But what would happen if, instead of electrons, we used... light? - Why light will defeat electronic science
An international team of researchers led by Dr. Yufeng Zhang (Aalto University, Finland) proved that complex tensor computations can be executed with a single pass of a beam of light.
No processors, no microchips, only the physics of light.
Imagine a 10-dimensional Rubik’s Cube.
A classical computer would rotate the sides one by one.
Light, however, solves the problem instantly, all dimensions simultaneously.
Why?
1) Information is encoded in light waves (amplitude, phase, wavelength).
2) The waves interact with each other, automatically performing complex mathematical operations (matrix multiplications, convolutions, attention).
3) The result appears in nanoseconds, the speed of light cannot be surpassed.
“Our method does what GPUs do, but at the speed of light and without overheating,” says Yufeng Zhang.
How it works: The “customs office” of data
Scientists explain it with a beautiful analogy:
A classical computer is like a customs office where each package (data) passes through many checks one by one.
An optical computer lets all packages pass through all checks simultaneously.
How?
Light creates “optical hooks” (interference patterns) that organize and process the data automatically, resulting in…
1) No more sequential steps, 100% parallelism.
2) No power consumption for switching transistors, light flows freely.
3) No limits to data dimensionality, not even at 100-D.
Passive computation: Light works on its own
The most impressive element of the new technology...
1) Light passes through the optical system without electronic controllers.
2) The computations are “embedded” in the form of the light beams.
3) The result is simply collected at the output, that’s it.
“This can be implemented on any optical platform, from laboratory setups to photonic chips,” says Prof. Zhipei Sun (Aalto University).
The future of AI: Light instead of graphics cards
When will the revolution arrive?
According to Zhang, in 3–5 years optical processors will be integrated into existing AI infrastructures.
This means that...
1) Supercomputers will reduce electricity consumption by 100 times.
2) Neural-network training will become thousands of times faster (today’s one week will become... one minute).
3) Mobile phones will gain powerful AI without overheating.
Practically, a new generation of hardware is being born:
1) Photonic chips instead of silicon.
2) Optical neural networks instead of digital ones.
3) The speed of light as the new engineering limit.
A bright future, literally
Scientists believe that optical tensor computations will not only accelerate AI, they will transform all technology:
1) Medicine (MRI and DNA analysis in seconds).
2) Autonomous vehicles (zero-delay response).
3) Financial analysis (true real-time forecasting).
“We are not simply improving computation, we are changing the physical basis of AI. Light will enable what today is considered impossible,” concludes Yufeng Zhang.
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