In a sense we did get it, the research into optical computing didn't lead to photonic cpu's, any advantages of optical computing are mute when each building blo

In a sense we did get it, the research into optical computing didn't lead to photonic cpu's, any advantages of optical computing are mute when each building block can't scale below a few square micrometers due to limits on the physics. However, the research did find it's way into telecom, high speed multiplexing switches, with massive bandwidth in a compact formfactor would not have been economically viable without photonics.