Traditional computing is approaching its limits. For decades, Moore’s Law served as a guiding principle for technological progress, predicting that the number of transistors on a microchip would double approximately every two years. This steady growth drove incredible advances in computer power, making each generation of devices faster, smaller, and more efficient than the last. Moore’s Law is why a smartphone today is more powerful than the room-sized computers of the 1970s.
However, this rule wasn’t destined to last forever. Transistors, the tiny switches that power computers, are now so small they’re nearing the size of individual atoms. Shrinking them further introduces problems like overheating and quantum effects, which make it impossible to maintain the same pace of progress. This has pushed scientists and engineers to explore entirely new approaches to computing.
One of the most promising breakthroughs is photonics, which uses light instead of electricity to process data. Light …