Why can photonic transistor circuits be made cheaper than electronics?
High speed electronics… that is, the best that can be achieved, takes extremely pure materials and extremely precise manufacturing equipment that can control manufacturing down to the size of an atom. One atom out of place and the part fails. Photonic transistors can be made of glass, plastic, aluminum and other common materials. Manufacturing tolerances are well within the capability of a growing number of commercial optical manufacturing methods. And, some manufacturing methods can actually stamp out photonic transistor holograms. What about noise? Unlike electronic circuits, conventional optical amplifiers and many nonlinear optics, the light in photonic transistors does not interact with the material of which the transistor is made, in such a way that would add noise to the signals passing through. One reason for this is that the process of optical interference, that the transistors are based on, involves only the redistribution of energy rather than absorption or re-emission of
