OSE Seminars
All-optical computational circuits in silicon photonics: how to make non-linear optics scalable?
Presented by Dr. Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Hewlett Packard labs
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer an enticing platform for further advances in computation. Photonic communications hardware is already widely used within datacenters and is now reaching into the board and chip level. This trend is driving the development of more complex PICs that are more tightly integrated into computing systems. This PIC technology could be attractive for building photonic computational accelerators and for incorporating all-optical signal processing tasks into photonic communications and sensing. At Hewlett Packard Labs, we are developing a silicon photonics platform to build complex PICs with many hundreds of components, including nonlinear components. We use these PICs to test various approaches to photonic computation, including neuromorphic approaches as well as traditional logic circuits. For example, we are currently experimentally testing a circuit to solve the so-called Ising problem, a classic problem of solid-state physics that is equivalent to a number of combinatorial optimization problems. The circuit is closely related to Hopfield neural networks. In parallel, we are investigating PICs based on photonic crystals in a GaAs platform. These PICs offer radically reduced power consumption compared to CMOS circuits, potentially consuming less than 1 fJ per elementary operation.
11:00 am, Friday, April 7, 2017
Room 103, Center for High Tech Materials
Science and Technology Park - South Campus
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A schedule of talks within the Department of Physics and Astronomy is available on the P&A web site at http://physics.unm.edu/pandaweb/events/index.php