This study focuses on the photo-thermoelastic interaction for a functionally graded semiconductor in the context of nonlocal heat conduction law. The medium is assumed to be functionally graded in which, the graded changes have been justified by the exponential variation of the material gradients. The bounding plane of the medium is influenced by a periodically varying heat source. The heat transport equation is governed by the nonlocal Moore–Gibson–Thompson (MGT) theory, which assimilates the memory-dependent derivative within a slipping interval. Laplace and the Fourier transform techniques have been utilized to arrive at the solutions of the governing equations. Moreover, the solutions in real space-time domain can be determined upon successively applying the inversion of the Fourier transform with the help of residual calculus, in which, the poles of the integrand have calculated numerically in complex domain by accomplishing Laguerre’s method. Also, the inversion of the Laplace transform has been performed numerically using a method based on Fourier series expansion technique. From the numerical estimates, the profound effect of various parameters such as the nonlocal parameter, correlating length parameter and the time-delay parameter on the thermophysical quantities has been discussed. From the numerical study, the superiority of a nonlinear kernel function compared to a linear kernel is analyzed. A comparative study of the existing literature with the present results have been depicted. A validation example is also considered to show the accuracy and efficiency of the current demonstration.