Edison is a semiconductor plant designed from the ground up around a single product class: next-generation optical computing chips.
Density improves on schedule. Interconnect does not. In modern accelerators the limit is set by the energy and latency of pushing electrons between memory and compute, and by the heat that leaves behind.
Each generation spends a larger share of its power budget on movement rather than arithmetic. That share is the ceiling.
A photon crossing a die costs the same as a photon crossing a rack. Distance stops being a power question.
One waveguide carries many independent channels at once. Bandwidth scales with colour, not with pin count.
Interference performs matrix multiplication in the optics themselves, with no clocked switching to pay for.
The physics has been demonstrated. The manufacturing has not.
Optical dies need thick waveguide stacks, etch uniformity held below a nanometre across the wafer, laser attach on die, and optical test before packaging. In a CMOS line these are deviations, scheduled around someone else's volume.
Borrowing capacity means accepting their tolerances and their queue. So Edison is building the line itself, with every module chosen for photonics first.