Photonic Integrated Circuits: Giant Leap in Computing Technology

There is a continued demand for increase in computing requirements from sensor, smartphones, to servers. However, the technology improvements in clock speed, power, and memory bandwidth from traditional electronic integrated circuits (EIC) has started to saturate. This has triggered further research in exploration of photon integrated circuits (PIC) that utilize photons (or particles of light) as opposed to electrons to form a functioning circuit. Research suggests that by integrating the benefits of EIC and PIC, one is able to harness the best of both worlds. The inherent advantages of photonics technology such as speed, energy-efficiency, and density, coupled with the advances in material technology, make them suitable to address the challenge of designing heterogeneous chips. This paper presents the fundamentals of the photonic technology, applicability to solving digital computing problems, ability to integrate into PICs, and its capability to complement electronic integrated circuits for powering the computing demands of emerging applications.