11 TeraFLOPs per second photonic convolutional accelerator for deep learning optical neural networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a universal optical neural network accelerator capable of exceeding 10 TeraFLOPS, enabling high-speed image recognition and deep learning tasks with potential for scalable, real-time applications.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a scalable, high-speed optical convolutional accelerator that performs beyond 10 TeraFLOPS, integrating temporal, wavelength, and spatial multiplexing for deep learning.

Findings

Achieved over 10 TeraFLOPS in optical convolutional acceleration.

Successfully recognized 10-digit handwritten images with 88% accuracy.

Demonstrated scalable architecture suitable for complex neural networks.

Abstract

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), inspired by biological visual cortex systems, are a powerful category of artificial neural networks that can extract the hierarchical features of raw data to greatly reduce the network parametric complexity and enhance the predicting accuracy. They are of significant interest for machine learning tasks such as computer vision, speech recognition, playing board games and medical diagnosis. Optical neural networks offer the promise of dramatically accelerating computing speed to overcome the inherent bandwidth bottleneck of electronics. Here, we demonstrate a universal optical vector convolutional accelerator operating beyond 10 TeraFLOPS (floating point operations per second), generating convolutions of images of 250,000 pixels with 8 bit resolution for 10 kernels simultaneously, enough for facial image recognition. We then use the same hardware to sequentially form a deep optical CNN with ten output neurons, achieving successful recognition of full 10 digits with 900 pixel handwritten digit images with 88% accuracy. Our results are based on simultaneously interleaving temporal, wavelength and spatial dimensions enabled by an integrated microcomb source. This approach is scalable and trainable to much more complex networks for demanding applications such as unmanned vehicle and real-time video recognition.