>>11733438there are opportunities for photonics, but the applications are limited.
one idea is to use photonic data buses to move data across cpu chips quickly. this is only useful for long distances, as the buses and electro-optic couplers/decouplers take up a huge amount of floor space.
another idea is to use photonics to implement certain math operations quickly. for instance, convolutions can be done with light, and are integral to neural networks. a light-based processor could be used to drastically increase computation speed, while decreasing power consumption. I think these will be common place in 10 years or so.
other than that, i don't see too many applications that will displace electonics
