> Conversion from analog to digital will necessarily involve the loss of information. Now the question is, is the data lost crucial to the operation of your system or not? If losing some data is not that big a deal, you might as well build it digitally from the ground up?

I think of it as the output being the solution of an equation/dynamic system. It's ok you lose the equations, you care about the solution. I've been doing some light internet research into this not too long ago and came across this title https://www.amazon.com/Neuromorphic-Photonics-Paul-R-Prucnal... that seems to suggest that analog photonics might be the way forward.

But I can't really comment on the state of this. Photonics is definitely becoming more and more viable it appears.

> Conversion from analog to digital will necessarily involve the loss of information. Now the question is, is the data lost crucial to the operation of your system or not? If losing some data is not that big a deal, you might as well build it digitally from the ground up?

I think of it as the output being the solution of an equation/dynamic system. It's ok you lose the equations, you care about the solution. I've been doing some light internet research into this not too long ago and came across this title https://www.amazon.com/Neuromorphic-Photonics-Paul-R-Prucnal... that seems to suggest that analog photonics might be the way forward.

But I can't really comment on the state of this. Photonics is definitely becoming more and more viable it appears.