Terahertz Computing – We’re closer to lightyears than you know it
A University of Nevada’s professor is looking into making the first fastest computers in the world that runs on infrared light than electricity. That said, they’re currently look to harvest the energy from terahertz radiation, which if successful will be the start of super computers/machines running on the speed of light.
“We have taken a first step to making circuits that can harness or guide terahertz radiation,” says Ajay Nahata, study leader and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Eventually — in a minimum of 10 years — this will allow the development of superfast circuits, computers and communications.”
Electricity is carried through metal wires. Light used for communication is transmitted through fiberoptic cables and split into different colors or “channels” of information using devices called waveguides. In a study to be published April 18 in the online journal Optics Express, Nahata and colleagues report they designed stainless steel foil sheets with patterns of perforations that successfully served as wire-like waveguides to transmit, bend, split or combine terahertz radiation.
“A waveguide is something that allows you to transport electromagnetic radiation from one point to another point, or distribute it across a circuit,” Nahata says.
If terahertz radiation is to be used in computing and communication, it not only must be transmitted from one device to another, “but you have to process it,” he adds. “This is where terahertz circuits are important. The long-term goal is to develop capabilities to create circuits that run faster than modern-day electronic circuits so we can have faster computers and faster data transfer via the Internet.”
Nahata conducted the study with two doctoral students in electrical and computer engineering: Wenqi Zhu and Amit Agrawal.
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