They might be able to solve those faster though (than silicon), since nobody has demonstrated a workable general-purpose (conventional) photonic computer - but

They might be able to solve those faster though (than silicon), since nobody has demonstrated a workable general-purpose (conventional) photonic computer - but TfA at least says they have a machine with 256 "spins", so while that's ~useless for real world problems, it seems to work while not being hugely complex, so there's hope for scaling it up, perhaps. (I roughly agree with the other "useless" comments in this thread, with a caveat)