Nathan Bates wrote:
A rumor is that yet another x86 startup company (as in Cyrix)
has opened shop on Freedom Circle (which by no coincidence,
is next-door to Transmeta). Dozens of tech companies tried to compete
in the x86 arena and all failed (including AMD in terms of
profitability).

I presume you mean "not as much profit" rather than "unprofitable."

The twist is that this x86 CPU will be based on photonic technology.
Photonics opens a world of design and architecture possibilities,
as compared to an electronic device where power dissipation
has historically limited architectural enhancements/innovations.

Do post when they start shipping anything other than glowing
projections. Like fusion and quantum computing, it's clear that it would
be much better than any existing alternative, if you could get it
working in any cost effective way.

In future tech, I'm much more impressed with the possibilities of that
company which can produce quantity boron-doped semiconducting diamond
for substrate. That seems to be deliverable with technology which exists
currently, although not all in the same place.

I spent a few decades at a major R&D lab, research is proving it can be
done, development is finding out how. There's a lot of engineering
needed to get photonic computing going. Just as a first thought, I would
think that a RISC design would be easier to emulate if that were a goal.

--
bill davidsen
SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center
http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com