This post was originally published on Data Center Knowledge
Photonic technologies are emerging as a realistic route to higher-throughput, more energy-efficient data centers – potentially well before general-purpose quantum machines become mainstream. Optical technologies already form the backbone of high-performance networking, and new photonic accelerators and components promise tangible gains in bandwidth, latency, and energy efficiency for AI workloads.
Here’s what that means, what’s real today, and how operators can prepare for photonic infrastructure.
What Is Photonic Computing?
Photonics uses light to transmit and process data. Most data centers already rely on photonic technology for fiber-optic networking. The newer development is computing with light using photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which execute operations (often linear algebra) directly in the optical domain.
This differs from:
Classical computing, which manipulates electrons on CMOS chips.
Quantum computing, which uses quantum mechanics. Some quantum systems use photons, but photonic computing does not require quantum effects and can be engineered to function much like specialized classical accelerators.
A diagram of a photonic integrated circuit. (Credit: Ovaga
— Read the rest of this post, which was originally published on Data Center Knowledge.
