Light-based chip can boost power efficiency of AI tasks up to 100-fold
A team at the University of Florida has developed a new kind of computer chip that uses light with electricity to perform one of the most power-intensive parts of artificial intelligence—image recognition and similar pattern-finding tasks. Using light dramatically cuts the power needed to perform these tasks, with efficiency 10 or even 100 times that of current chips performing the same calculations. Using this approach could help rein in the enormous demand for electricity that is straining power grids while enabling higher performance AI models and systems.
Researchers at Tsinghua University developed the Optical Feature Extraction Engine (OFE2), an optical engine that processes data at 12.5 GHz using light rather than electricity. Its integrated diffraction and data preparation modules enable unprecedented speed and efficiency for AI tasks. Demonstrations in imaging and trading showed improved accuracy, lower latency,…
Photonic devices are hardware systems that can process information using light instead of electricity. These systems could potentially perform computations faster than electronic devices, while also consuming less energy.
Imagine supercomputers that think with light instead of electricity. That s the breakthrough two European research teams have made, demonstrating how intense laser pulses through ultra-thin glass fibers can perform AI-like computations thousands of times faster than traditional electronics. Their system doesn t just break speed records it achieves near…