Photonics was supposed to be a big part of Thunderbolt, a long long time ago. I'm still intensely excited for this tech, well over a decade latter, even if it's

Photonics was supposed to be a big part of Thunderbolt, a long long time ago. I'm still intensely excited for this tech, well over a decade latter, even if it's for a totally different market. I keep imagining a future of highly integrated chips. Some on-package ram, then some optical interconnects on the side, and then basically the whole chip might be able to run fine if all the "motherboard" provides is power. Patrick always does a good job on his write-ups. He wisely talks to CXL at the end. The recent 3.0 drop really elevates it from a peripheral interconnect to a fabric, & looks amazing. The only wrinkle is that CPU makers need to implement some way for CPUs to be able to also be devices, if this fabric is to prove it's value. Nothing stops anyone from adding CXL.mem to their CPUs for CXL RDMA, but adoption is probably gonna lag, and CXL will probably be for fabric-attached peripherals for... a significant time.