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Zhang and his colleagues created a gate from a single layer of molybdenum disulfide—consisting of a sheet of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between two layers of sulfur atoms—placed on top of silica. When the researchers shone two light beams at the gate, the handedness (also known as chirality) of the output beam was determined by the chirality of the input beams. When both input beams had the same chirality, the output was right-handed, but when both input beams had different chirality, the output beam was left-handed.

>Zhang and his colleagues created a gate from a single layer of molybdenum disulfide—consisting of a sheet of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between two layers of sulfur atoms—placed on top of silica. When the researchers shone two light beams at the gate, the handedness (also known as chirality) of the output beam was determined by the chirality of the input beams. When both input beams had the same chirality, the output was right-handed, but when both input beams had different chirality, the output beam was left-handed.

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[–] 3 pts

IEEE has been spouting "OPTICAL DIGITAL COMPEWWWWWWWWWWWTING!" for decades. They had a symposium on it in the early 90s because it was just around the corner, like within the next few generations of computing.

[–] 1 pt

Impressive accomplishment.

However, the Chinese are yet to master making chips with existing technology.

[–] 0 pt

Light gates wouldn't be affected by EMPs and solar flares. US semiconductors were superior to Russian vacuum tubes in the cold war.

[–] 3 pts

Light gates might protect the processor from EMP, but there are still plenty of other delicate electronic parts in modern computing devices that would be fried.

[–] 2 pts (edited )

Light gates wouldn't be affected by EMPs and solar flares.

The molybdenum disulfide logic circuit may not be effected, but I think the diodes producing the ingoing light, reading the outgoing light and the power source powering those diodes would be effected by EMP/flares.

[–] 0 pt

Whoop dee doo. Who needs a fast computer when you've got 20 fingers and toes to count with and a smartphone.

[–] 0 pt

Most people refer to that as polarity. Vertical, horizontal, circular CW, circular CCW.

I guess I'll be "that guy" and ask if someone can simplify this for idiots that don't do tech(i.e. me).

[–] 2 pts

a "gate" is the simplest logic circuit from which all others are built.

it is essentially no different from an on-off switch, but one that can be controlled electronically rather than manually. by clever and insightful arrangement of multiple gates, the boolean functions AND OR NOT XOR etc. can be built. all computing follows from this.

[–] 0 pt

The abstract task gates do is discriminate between combinations of inputs, i.e. signaling when a particular pattern is present.

[–] 1 pt

Tiny mirrors do computing fast fast

Eh, we won't likely see photonics in consumer products (or even lower level industrial projects) for quite some time

[–] 0 pt

Screw optical. That's old tech. I'm waiting for quantum.

[–] 0 pt

So goblins did a very expensive lab experiment with a photonic xor gate, and they still can’t fabricate a competitive CMOS CPU, which this experiment won’t work either.

This is yet another example of the chongs fucking around with things without knowing what they’re doing, and expecting to sit at the adults’ table at dinner time.