Kavli Affiliate: Kerry J. Vahala
| First 5 Authors: Gordon H. Y. Li, Midya Parto, Jinhao Ge, Qing-Xin Ji, Maodong Gao
| Summary:
A computer’s clock rate ultimately determines the minimum time between
sequential operations or instructions. Despite exponential advances in
electronic computer performance owing to Moore’s Law and increasingly parallel
system architectures, computer clock rates have remained stagnant at
$sim5~mathrm{GHz}$ for almost two decades. This poses an intractable problem
for applications requiring real-time processing or control of ultrafast
information systems. Here we break this barrier by proposing and experimentally
demonstrating computing based on an end-to-end and all-optical recurrent neural
network harnessing the ultrafast nature of linear and nonlinear optical
operations while avoiding electronic operations. The all-optical computer
realizes linear operations, nonlinear functions, and memory entirely in the
optical domain with $>100~mathrm{GHz}$ clock rates. We experimentally
demonstrate a prototypical task of noisy waveform classification as well as
perform ultrafast in-situ analysis of the soliton states from integrated
optical microresonators. We further illustrate the application of the
architecture for generative artificial intelligence based on quantum
fluctuations to generate images even in the absence of input optical signals.
Our results highlight the potential of all-optical computing beyond what can be
achieved with digital electronics by utilizing ultrafast linear, nonlinear, and
memory functions and quantum fluctuations.
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