Researchers are increasingly exploring photonic in-memory computing as a potential solution to the limitations of conventional digital systems, promising faster, more energy-efficient computation. Jebacyril Arockiaraj, Sasindu Wijeratne, and Sugeet Sunder from the University of Southern California, alongside Md Abdullah-Al Kaiser, Akhilesh Jaiswal, and Ajey P Jacob et al. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, present a comprehensive system-level performance model to accurately assess this emerging technology. Their work uniquely captures critical latency factors, such as memory access and opto-electronic conversion, and demonstrates performance across diverse high-performance computing workloads, including fluid dynamics, tensor operations, and plasma physics…