Optical & photonic computing asks what computers gain when information rides on light instead of charge. The answer turns out to be sharply two-sided: light is a spectacular carrier and a stubborn switch — so this course is as much about where photonics wins (interconnects, matrix arithmetic, quantum sampling) as about the physics of waveguides, interferometers and modulators that make it possible. It builds the full stack: guiding light on a silicon chip, the Mach–Zehnder meshes that compute matrix products by interference, photonic neural-network accelerators and their honest energy accounting, analog Fourier processors and Ising machines, the post-mortem of all-optical digital logic, the optical links rewiring datacenters, and photonic quantum computing from Hong–Ou–Mandel interference to fusion-based architectures.

It assumes fluency with wave optics, linear algebra and the basics of neural networks, and pairs naturally with the Chip Design, Computer Architecture and Quantum Computing courses — photonics is the connective tissue between all three.

Module 0 — Background

Module 1 — Light as an information carrier

Module 2 — Guided light

Module 3 — Photonic building blocks

Module 4 — Interference as computation

Module 5 — Photonic AI accelerators

Module 6 — Analog optical computing

Module 7 — Digital optical logic

Module 8 — Optical interconnects

Module 9 — Photonic quantum computing

Module 10 — Neuromorphic and emerging photonics

Module 11 — Systems and capstone

Begin → Why Compute with Light?

The people

The subject's story runs through a remarkable cast: James Clerk Maxwell, whose four equations said light was electromagnetism; Albert Michelson, who measured with interference fringes what no ruler could reach; Charles Kao, who insisted glass could be made pure enough to carry the world's conversations — and was right; Theodore Maiman, whose ruby laser beat the giants to the punch; Dennis Gabor, who invented holography while waiting for a tennis court; and behind them Huygens, Young, Fourier, Planck, Einstein, Shannon, Landauer and Feynman, whose waves, quanta, bits and limits the photons still obey.