Photonics for sustainable AI
Farbin Fayza, Cansu Demirkiran, Satyavolu S. Papa Rao, Darius Bunandar, Udit Gupta, Ajay M. Joshi · Communications Physics · 2025
The rising computational demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are driving a rapid surge in carbon emissions from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. Traditional CMOS-based computing is reaching its scaling limits and struggling to meet these immense demands in a carbon-sustainable manner—underscoring the need for alternative hardware solutions for AI. Photonic computing has emerged as a promising alternative to CMOS through its energy-efficient computing capabilities in the optical domain. This perspective explores the potential of photonics as a carbon-sustainable solution for the next-generation AI hardware. The growing computational demands of AI are significantly increasing carbon emissions from the ICT sector, while traditional CMOS-based computing faces scaling and sustainability limits. This perspective explores photonic computing as a promising, energy-efficient alternative for enabling carbon-sustainable next-generation AI hardware.