New special-purpose computer may someday save us billions
Saturday, October 22, 2016 - 09:32
in Physics & Chemistry
The processing power of standard computers is likely to reach its maximum in the next 10 to 25 years. Even at this maximum power, traditional computers won't be able to handle a particular class of problem that involves combining variables to come up with many possible answers, and looking for the best solution. Now, an entirely new type of computer that blends optical and electrical processing could get around this impending processing constraint and solve those problems. If it can be scaled up, this non-traditional computer could save costs by finding more optimal solutions to problems that have an incredibly high number of possible solutions.