Coherent Photonic Architectures: The Missing Link?

The incorporation of on-chip photonic interconnect would be a major evolutionary step for microprocessor design; considering the big picture of the limits of conventional CMOS scaling, where could this lead in the long run? I... [ view full abstract ]

The incorporation of on-chip photonic interconnect would be a major evolutionary step for microprocessor design; considering the big picture of the limits of conventional CMOS scaling, where could this lead in the long run? I will argue that coherent photonic circuit/network models represent a crucial missing link between traditional processor architectures and revolutionary architectural paradigms including quantum and neuromorphic computation. I will review recent advances in our ability to model coherent photonic circuits/networks at the quantum physical level incorporating realistic models of dissipation and decoherence. Such models facilitate exploratory performance and robustness studies of autonomous quantum information processing as well as ultra-low power classical digital and analog computation. Major technical challenges arise in dimensional reduction of quantum circuit/network models, which are coupled in an intriguing way to fundamental theoretical questions regarding the origins of quantum speedups.