Various embodiments of the present invention are related to photonic-interconnect systems for reading data from and writing data to memory cells of memory chips at approximately the same time. In one embodiment of the present invention, A photonic-interconnect system comprises a photonic interconnect coupled to a photonic device. The photonic interconnect is coupled to the memory chip and is configured to encode a first data set stored in the memory cells into a first set of electromagnetic signals at approximately the same time, decode a second data set encoded in a second set of electromagnetic signals at approximately the same time, and store the second data set in the memory cells. The photonic device is configured to transmit the first set of electromagnetic signals out from the photonic interconnect and transmit the second set of electromagnetic signals into the photonic interconnect.