Photonic computing has emerged as a promising paradigm for accelerating artificial intelligence workloads by leveraging light-based information processing to overcome the bandwidth, latency, and energy limitations of conventional electronic architectures. This theoretical review synthesizes recent advances in photonic computing for AI acceleration, covering optical computing fundamentals, silicon photonics, photonic integrated circuits, optical neural networks, hybrid electronic–photonic systems, opportunities, applications, challenges, and future research directions. The review highlights current technological limitations while discussing the role of photonic computing in the post-Moore computing era.
Hira Fatima (Sat,) studied this question.