Photonic Computing: Programming a New Class of AI Accelerators (incl. Live Coding)

Photonic computing is an emerging compute paradigm benefitting AI workloads that are increasingly constrained by the physical limits of classical digital hardware. By performing basic mathematical operations natively with light, photonic accelerators offer new approaches to efficiency and scalability for AI and high-performance computing.

This deep dive session provides a practical introduction to photonic computing from a developer’s perspective. We start by explaining the core principles behind photonic computation and how they differ from classical digital computing. The session then focuses on the architecture of Q.ANT’s photonic co-processor and its integration in standard x86 systems.

Beyond theory, the talk explores how developers program such hardware. We will walk through the Q.ANT software stack, explain how workloads are mapped to photonic accelerators and demonstrate a concrete programming example in a live coding session.

The goal of this talk is to give developers an understanding of photonic computing, show what is already possible today and outline how they can start experimenting with this technology themselves.