Principles of Neuromorphic Photonics

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in integrated neuromorphic photonics, highlighting its potential to overcome limitations of traditional electronics in data processing through photonic neural networks and integrated photonic chips.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of neuromorphic photonics, including photonic neural network approaches, photonic neuron design, interconnection architectures, and future outlooks.

Findings

Photonic platforms are rapidly advancing towards scalable, commercially viable chips.

Photonic neural networks offer superior speed and reconfigurability over electronic counterparts.

Challenges include integration complexity and developing robust photonic neuron architectures.

Abstract

In an age overrun with information, the ability to process reams of data has become crucial. The demand for data will continue to grow as smart gadgets multiply and become increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Next-generation industries in artificial intelligence services and high-performance computing are so far supported by microelectronic platforms. These data-intensive enterprises rely on continual improvements in hardware. Their prospects are running up against a stark reality: conventional one-size-fits-all solutions offered by digital electronics can no longer satisfy this need, as Moore's law (exponential hardware scaling), interconnection density, and the von Neumann architecture reach their limits. With its superior speed and reconfigurability, analog photonics can provide some relief to these problems; however, complex applications of analog photonics have remained largely unexplored due to the absence of a robust photonic integration industry. Recently, the landscape for commercially-manufacturable photonic chips has been changing rapidly and now promises to achieve economies of scale previously enjoyed solely by microelectronics. The scientific community has set out to build bridges between the domains of photonic device physics and neural networks, giving rise to the field of \emph{neuromorphic photonics}. This article reviews the recent progress in integrated neuromorphic photonics. We provide an overview of neuromorphic computing, discuss the associated technology (microelectronic and photonic) platforms and compare their metric performance. We discuss photonic neural network approaches and challenges for integrated neuromorphic photonic processors while providing an in-depth description of photonic neurons and a candidate interconnection architecture. We conclude with a future outlook of neuro-inspired photonic processing.