Challenges in Digital Optical Computing

All-optical digital computing has the potential to greatly reduce the latency, power consumption and increasing bandwidth in data center devices. This, however, requires solving 3 fundamental computing paradigms using all-optical methods: data in use, data at rest and data in transit. In this talk we present the current challenges in optical digital logic and discuss the criteria for real-world processing needs (data in use), the challenges in optical memory able to interface with said logic (data at rest) and the challenges facing the overall architectures and interconnects (data in transit). Our goal is to explore how an all-optical digital computer can be realized in the near future by addressing all these challenges and proposing roadmaps for their solution.