How could photonic computing transform processing speed?

The answer

Photonic computing uses light instead of electrical signals to process information, offering enormous speed and energy efficiency advantages. Light-based processors operate at terahertz frequencies - roughly 1,000 times faster than electronic transistors - and generate minimal heat. Lightmatter, founded by MIT researchers, developed a photonic chip that performs matrix multiplications for AI using interferometric light circuits, consuming 10 times less power than GPUs. In 2024, Intel demonstrated integrated silicon photonic links for data centers. The startup Luminous Computing is building photonic processors specifically for large language model inference. Photonic tensor cores can perform multiply-accumulate operations at the speed of light. Major challenges remain in photonic memory and nonlinear operations, but hybrid electronic-photonic architectures are already entering commercial deployment for specific AI workloads.