Integrated photonic neuromorphic computing

In the paper 'Integrated photonic neuromorphic computing: opportunities and challenges' published in Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering, the authors explain how optical computing is a valid option for the faster processing required by artificial intelligence.  

In neuromorphic photonics the bosonic nature of light is exploited for high-speed, densely multiplexed linear operations, whereas the superior computing modalities of biological neurons are imitated to accelerate computations.  In the paper, the authors provide an overview of recent advances in integrated synaptic optical devices and on-chip photonic neural networks focusing on the location in the architecture at which the optical to electrical conversion takes place.

The authors present challenges associated with electro-optical conversions, implementations of optical nonlinearity, amplification and processing in the time domain, and they identify promising emerging photonic neuromorphic hardware.