Holographic computer circuits for storing processor instruction sets have been developed by the California Institute of Technology under contract from the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration, the space agency reports. NASA reckons that the new technique should lead to dramatic increases in processing speed since the new circuits aren’t bound by the same design considerations as those in existing chips. Current plans call for the instruction set of the processor to reside in a holographic optical element that is physically separate from the arithmetic-logic unit so that light signals could be transmitted vertically through the chip, eliminating the more circuitous horizontal route commonly used in existing chips. Assuming that the hologram would be electrically programmable, the instruction set could be changed nearly as fast as the system clock rate and NASA reckons that such real-time changes in the instruction set could lead to spectacular advances in performance of task-driven programming or artificial intelligence applications.
