It may be hard to correctly anticipate what impact this breakthrough will have, but i get the sense that this combine with quantum computing could change our future pretty quickly. I feel excited about it and frightened at the same time ...
I imagine integrating Hybrid-Memory Cube or High-Bandwidth Memory with a processor die (2.5D or actual 3D) would likely give you higher bandwidth at lower TOTAL* power and lower latency.
* In a lot of these photonics papers they conveniently forget to mention the power it takes to shine the lasers, and they only focus on the joules/bit number required in the communication. I suspect if you added up the entire power it would be higher overall than an electronic circuit.
... Not good enough that we won't need to use a quantum error correcting code and repeaters that pump out the decoherence errors along the way, but still important.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-lab...