Friedberg @ 00:50:57Inconclusive
techai
By the end of the 21st century (by year 2100), electron-based computing (using copper interconnects and conventional semiconductor electronics) will largely be supplanted, for most major computing workloads, by photonic (photon-based) and quantum–photonic computing systems.
I have a belief that I think electron based computing is going to go by the wayside by the end of the century and be replaced with photon based computing. And I think we're going to move most of what we do today with copper and semiconducting material over to photonic material and photonic systems, and what will ultimately be quantum meets photonic systems, probably at some point this century.View on YouTube
Explanation
It is too early to evaluate this prediction.
The claim is about the end of the 21st century (by ~2100). As of today (2025), electron-based semiconductor computing still overwhelmingly dominates all major computing workloads. Photonic and quantum–photonic technologies exist but are at early research or niche-deployment stages:
- Silicon photonics is being used mainly for high-speed data center interconnects and specialized optical networking, not as a general replacement for CMOS logic in CPUs/GPUs.
- Photonic computing prototypes (e.g., optical matrix multipliers and accelerators for AI) are still experimental or very limited in commercial deployment, far from handling “most major computing workloads.”
- Quantum and quantum–photonic systems are early-stage: current devices have small qubit counts, high error rates, and are used for research and very limited proof-of-concept applications, not broad production workloads.
Because the prediction is explicitly about the technological landscape by ~2100 and we are only in 2025, there is no way to determine yet whether electron-based computing will be “largely supplanted” for most workloads. The correct status is therefore inconclusive (too early to tell).