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April 11, 2024 // Upgrade 2024

Optical Edge Computing

Ryan Hamerly; Saumil Bandyopadhyay

Summary

Optical Edge Computing

Photonics has always been great for instant, high-speed communication, but recently there has been interest in using it for computing. NTT Research is working to combine these capabilities and build photonic accelerators for machine learning, which has led to a novel architecture for “delocalized” photonic machine learning at the edge. Beyond lab demonstrations, we discuss how the emerging industry of “silicon photonics” today allows these concepts to be rapidly scaled up to real-world applications.