1) this is a research device and a theoretical scaling law; it’s not been proven.
> We conclude that with well-engineered, large-scale optical hardware, it may be possible to achieve a 100× energy-efficiency advantage
Emphasis on may.
2) in the real world, constant factors matter (as you allude to). For example if an ASIC gets a 1000x speedup (optimistic; we saw this for BTC) it might be the better choice for this generation, but start to lose next gen and beyond. If an ASIC only gets 100x or lower then it’s not favorable this gen.
So sure, this tech might win in the long term, but I wasn’t making any categorical claims, just noting that there are multiple horses we need to track.
It would be quite foolish to dismiss custom silicon solutions based on this paper.
> We conclude that with well-engineered, large-scale optical hardware, it may be possible to achieve a 100× energy-efficiency advantage
Emphasis on may.
2) in the real world, constant factors matter (as you allude to). For example if an ASIC gets a 1000x speedup (optimistic; we saw this for BTC) it might be the better choice for this generation, but start to lose next gen and beyond. If an ASIC only gets 100x or lower then it’s not favorable this gen.
So sure, this tech might win in the long term, but I wasn’t making any categorical claims, just noting that there are multiple horses we need to track.
It would be quite foolish to dismiss custom silicon solutions based on this paper.