What is the difference between an optical computer and silicon based optical chip?
An optical computer (also called a photonic computer) is a device thatuses the photon s in visible light or infrared ( IR ) beams,rather than electric current, to perform digital computations. An electric current flows at only about 10 percent of thespeed of light. This limits the rate at which data can be exchanged over longdistances, and is one of the factors that led to the evolution of optical fiber . By applying some of theadvantages of visible and/or IR networks at the device and component scale, a computer might someday be developed that can perform operations 10 or more times faster than a conventional electronic computer. Read this article on Optical chip at the link given below. Both the sources mentioned below are informative.
