Hypermultiplexed integrated-photonics-based optical tensor processor

The escalating data volume and complexity resulting from the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and 5G/6G mobile networks is creating an urgent need for energy-efficient, scalable computing hardware. Here we demonstrate a hypermultiplexed integrated photonics-based tensor optical processor (HITOP) that can perform trillions of operations per second (TOPS) at the energy efficiency of 40 TOPS/W. Space-time-wavelength three-dimensional (3D) optical parallelism enables O(N2) operations per clock-cycle using O(N) modulator devices. The system is built with wafer-fabricated III/V micron-scale lasers and high-speed thin-film Lithium-Niobate electro-optics for encoding at 10s femtojoule/symbol. Lasing threshold incorporates an analog inline rectifier (ReLu) nonlinearity for low-latency activation. The system scalability is verified with machine learning models of 405,000 parameters. A combination of high clockrates, energy-efficient processing, and programmability unlocks the potential of light for large-scale AI accelerators in applications ranging from training of large AI models to real-time decision making in edge deployment.