Almost all of the modern world’s information-processing tasks are powered by electrons. But scientists have long considered whether the photon — the quantum particle of light — could be a more promising candidate. Optical systems are not subject to electrical resistance and they can transmit data across multiple frequencies in parallel, massively boosting energy efficiency and data flows.²⁷

Future Horizons:

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5-yearhorizon

Photonic hardware matures and is put to work

Advances in chip manufacturing make it possible to combine photonic and electronic components on the same chip. These hybrid processors become a popular approach for running computer vision models in applications where speed and energy efficiency are important. Noisy optical chips also become the go-to for implementing probabilistic neural networks. Photonics becomes a popular approach for processing inherently optical signals such as LIDAR and camera data.

10-yearhorizon

Quantum computing embraces photonic hardware

Photonic approaches to quantum computing gain traction, thanks to the simplicity of the hardware compared with superconducting approaches and their compatibility with light-based quantum and classical communication technology. The technology also enables new analogue computing paradigms that significantly boost scientists’ ability to model some complex phenomena.

25-yearhorizon

Fabrication progress creates high-performance photonic computing

The success of optical devices in certain specialised applications drives progress in fabrication and integration technology, helping photonics to close the gap with silicon-based chips. It becomes a general-purpose computing technology and, thanks to faster processing speeds and much lower energy requirement, replaces conventional computing hardware in several important tasks and applications.

These advantages have been known about for decades, but recent innovations, driven by investments from the telecoms industry, have started to make optical computing devices practical. Breakthroughs in silicon photonics are making it possible to build sophisticated optical processors using the same technology as the existing chip industry.²⁸

The most promising near-term application appears to be in AI. That is because optical processors are very efficient at carrying out operations known as matrix multiplications; these are fundamental to all deep-learning algorithms.²⁹ But photonic technology appears to be a fundamental building block that could also be used to build quantum computers, neuromorphic processors, memristors and even analogue computing devices.³⁰ ³¹ ³² ³³The inherent noisiness of optical systems, in particular, is a novel feature that can be harnessed for tasks like probabilistic machine learning and optimisation.³⁴ ³⁵

There are reasons for caution: catching up with and displacing decades of progress in silicon transistor technology remains an enormous engineering and financial challenge. In addition, photonic chips rely on wavelengths of light measured in micrometres, making it unlikely they could achieve the kind of miniaturisation found in silicon chips that already boast nanoscale features.

Optical Computing - Anticipation Scores

The Anticipation Potential of a research field is determined by the capacity for impactful action in the present, considering possible future transformative breakthroughs in a field over a 25-year outlook. A field with a high Anticipation Potential, therefore, combines the potential range of future transformative possibilities engendered by a research area with a wide field of opportunities for action in the present. We asked researchers in the field to anticipate:

The uncertainty related to future science breakthroughs in the field
The transformative effect anticipated breakthroughs may have on research and society
The scope for action in the present in relation to anticipated breakthroughs.

This chart represents a summary of their responses to each of these elements, which when combined, provide the Anticipation Potential for the topic. See methodology for more information.