The endless quest for smaller, faster, and more powerful computers may have its end goal in sight in a USC Viterbi School project directed by a young Iowa-born associate professor of electrical engineering, John O'Brien.  O’Brien is at the center of a multi-disciplinary team that, with National Science Foundation funding, is creating a kind of ultimate computing device.  It is based on designing single pulses, or quanta, of light that perform computations based on the arcane and slippery rules of quantum mechanics. Theorists say that such devices could short-circuit the restrictions of normal electronic systems by creating clouds of quantum possibilities that will resolve -- if the algorithm is designed properly -- into the correct answer. Such devices would not only be much smaller, faster, more energy efficient and more powerful than existing systems, but would also be close to the physical limits of how fast and powerful, etc., a computing system could be.

 

One real-world use could be much better ways to make information secure from eavesdroppers. Beyond that O'Brien says that we're still to early in the process to know.

 

"Right now, we're just building a toolbox," he says.  O'Brien's part of the toolbox is to make infinitesimal devices to create the light pulses, from his Microphotonic Devices Group (MPDG), which already has to its credit the smallest laser ever built.  Said device is a nanomachine.  It is a machine that creates its single pulse of light from a single defect carefully manufactured on the surface of an otherwise perfect crystal.

 

The individuals who comprise the rest of the team span a huge range of disciplines, from quantum mechanics to electronic controls, to signal processing, to classic electronics, to photonic transmission.  The team includes two members of the National Academy of Engineering (P. Daniel Dapkus and William Lindsey) and two other full professors (Alan Willner, Anthony F.J. Levi); and others, including recently recruited quantum wizard Todd Brun. There’s even another National Academy member, Joseph Campbell, from the University of Texas/Austin

 

Where else besides the USC Viterbi School could such a team be assembled?

 

O'Brien pauses, thinks: "Maybe two other places in the world," he guesses.