Optical computing

Optical computing uses light to represent, transmit, or process information, often alongside electronic components. It exploits optical properties such as wavelength, phase, and polarization to manipulate signals.

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Optical interconnect: A communication link that carries data using light between electronic components or computing systems. Optical links move data between processors while avoiding some electrical transmission limits.
Matrix multiplication: An operation that combines two matrices by multiplying rows of one by columns of the other. Optical transformations can implement large matrix operations central to machine learning.
Electronic computing: Computing that represents and processes information primarily through electronic signals and circuits. It remains the dominant alternative, with mature logic, memory, and fabrication technologies.
Holography: A method of recording and reconstructing a light wavefront to produce a three-dimensional image. Holographic methods inspired proposals for storing and processing information in parallel.
Optical-to-electrical conversion: The conversion of an optical signal into an electrical signal for electronic processing or measurement. Repeated conversions can erase optical speed and energy advantages.
Photonic integrated circuit: A chip that integrates multiple optical components to generate, guide, manipulate, or detect light. Integrated optical components put computation and signal routing onto a shared platform.
Photonic accelerator: A computing device that uses photonic components to accelerate selected workloads. These systems target computational tasks that can benefit from optical parallelism.
Optoelectronics: The study and technology of devices that interact with both light and electrical signals. Optical computers often depend on optoelectronic conversion at their interfaces.
Dennis Gabor: A Hungarian-British physicist who invented holography in 1947. His work supplied a foundational optical technique later considered for computing.
Optical nonlinearity: A response in which a material’s optical behavior depends nonlinearly on the light field’s intensity. Nonlinear operations are needed for many forms of logic, but can require substantial power.