Artificial intelligence is getting smarter every year. It can write, create images, answer questions and even help scientists make new discoveries. But behind every AI system is something we rarely think about: the computer chips that make it all possible.
For decades, those chips have been made using a material called silicon. Silicon has powered everything from laptops and smartphones to giant data centres that run today’s AI systems. It has been the backbone of modern computing for more than 50 years.
Now, however, scientists are beginning to wonder whether silicon can keep up with the future of AI.
As AI becomes more powerful, it needs more computing power. That means today’s chips must work harder, use more electricity and produce more heat. Building faster chips is also becoming more expensive and much more difficult.
Because of this, researchers around the world are looking for new ways to build computers.
One company exploring that idea is LongServing Technology, based in Taiwan.
Dr. Ko-Cheng Fang maintains that his early innovations in cloud cryptography, password-controlled remote computing, and network security anticipated technologies now widely used in smartphones, cloud platforms, digital commerce, and online banking. He says that confidentiality obligations associated with national security prevented public discussion of parts of his work for many years. Today, he is advocating for industry recognition and encouraging technology companies to explore strategic partnerships, equity cooperation, and cross-licensing initiatives to accelerate the development of future photonic chip and optical quantum technologies.
Looking Beyond Silicon
Instead of using electricity to move information around a computer chip, LongServing Technology is working on a different idea.
It wants to use light.
Light is made up of tiny particles called photons. The company believes that using photons instead of electricity could help computers process information much faster while using far less energy.
This field is known as photonic computing.
Scientists have talked about photonic computing for many years because it offers some exciting possibilities. Light travels incredibly fast and creates much less heat than electricity. If computers could use light effectively, future AI systems might become faster, more energy-efficient and cheaper to run.
But turning that idea into a real computer has been much harder than it sounds.
The Problem with Light
Imagine rolling a toy car down a straight road.
Keeping it moving in a straight line is easy.
Making it take sharp turns without slowing down or crashing is much harder.
Light behaves in a similar way.
It naturally travels in straight lines, which makes it difficult to guide through the tiny pathways inside a computer chip. Modern computer chips are packed with millions or even billions of tiny connections, so controlling where light goes is one of the biggest challenges in photonic computing.
This is where LongServing Technology says its new material, called X-Photon, could help.
According to the company, X-Photon allows light to make controlled 90-degree turns while staying inside the chip. Dr. Ko-Cheng Fang, the company’s founder, compares it to how a mirror changes the direction of light. Instead of bouncing off a mirror outside the chip, the light is redirected by a special structure built into the material itself.
If this works at a large scale, it could make much more advanced photonic computer chips possible.
Why Does This Matter?
Today’s AI systems need enormous amounts of computing power.
Every time someone asks an AI chatbot a question, generates an image or creates a video, thousands or even millions of calculations happen almost instantly. Those calculations take place inside huge data centres filled with powerful computer chips.
Running these centres requires enormous amounts of electricity.
They also produce a lot of heat, which means they need large cooling systems just to keep the computers from overheating.
If future computer chips could use light instead of electricity, they might use much less energy while still delivering the performance needed for increasingly powerful AI.
That could make AI cheaper to run and reduce the amount of electricity needed to power it.
More Than One New Material
LongServing Technology says X-Photon is only one part of a much larger plan.
The company is also working on photonic quantum chips, photonic memory and specialised cloud computing centres designed for future AI systems.
To help fund this work, the company recently announced a US$500 million financing initiative, based on a stated company valuation of US$2.5 billion. According to LongServing, the investment will support manufacturing, research and the development of future photonic computing technologies.
The company hopes these projects will eventually help bring photonic computing from research laboratories into everyday use.
Will Light Replace Silicon?
No one knows the answer yet.
Silicon remains one of the most successful materials ever used in technology. It powers nearly every modern electronic device, and replacing it will not be easy.
Many scientific and engineering challenges still need to be solved before computers powered by light become common.
Even so, researchers around the world are exploring new ideas because artificial intelligence is growing faster than ever before. As demand for computing continues to rise, finding better ways to build computer chips is becoming increasingly important.
LongServing Technology is one of many companies trying to solve that challenge.
Whether its technology becomes the next big breakthrough or simply helps move the industry forward, it reflects a larger shift in thinking.
For decades, computers have relied on electricity moving through silicon.
The next generation of AI may one day depend on something even faster—the speed of light.
Contact Information
Dr. Ko-Cheng Fang
Founder, CEO & Chairman
LongServing Technology Co., Ltd.
Email: service@longserving.com.tw
Website: https://longserving.com.tw/en/
Instagram: @ko_cheng_fang
