Reggie writes: << Just a guess here, but I think one problem would be size. I'm not sure of the feasability of groups of mirrors being made small enough to be as densely packed as ICs. >> When you get rid of the clock, no need for excessive miniaturization, 1) because there's no need for synchronized computations and 2) light through almost any media is way faster than electricity through almost any media.
And: << How were you envisioning the light getting from mirror to mirror? Would the light just travel through air, or were you thinking about fiberoptic cable? >> Whatever works. Air is fine, if you want to use elegant positioning in your design, and fiberoptic cable if you want to change scale. Whatever works, prolly a combination of the two. In your home workshop you'll use air first and positioning to get the thing working. Then you can do what the yacht racers do, which is analyze by computer and mathematic algorithms to improve efficiency in design. Vila or NYW guy can then build it for you using proven methods. In fact, using TTL, you don't even need a central processing unit, which is really just a clock-driven set of very small TTL devices. The TI TTL manual provides circuit diagrams and everything else you may need to produce boolean algebra, which is all you need to build the computers we have now. Thinking devices is probably doable in a couple of lifetimes, who knows?
