[thatcherc]

The chip described in this paper is actually less like a normal FPGA in that the chip isn't full of logic gates that can be reconfigured. Instead, it's full of optical elements (like modulators, multiplexers, beam splitters, and phase shifters) that can be connected in a certain pattern by erasing certain elements in the design.

Their hope is that by building a chip with lots of generally useful elements, many different industries will find it useful because they can just program the chip to utilize the components they need. (Fig. 6) Instead of computing with this chip, industry and researchers will be more interested in making things like optical transceivers. Having one common, reconfigurable chip that everyone uses would mean it could be mass produced at a lower cost, making research and production of silicon photonic systems more accessible.

At least that's what I've gathered from the paper - I'm definitely not an expert here. In theory I guess you could put optically switched gates in there too to make something more like an electrical FPGA - I'm sure that's long-term goal for the authors.