Neural network hardware based on optoelectronic devices and electronic techniques

In this paper we present an optoelectronic hardware implementation of a neural network system based on optoelectronic devices and electronic techniques. The system is composed of basic cells with optoelectronic artificial neurons; every basic cells exploits the communication strengths of optics to broadcast the input to all neurons and the computational strengths of electronics to assign the interconnections weights. Description of the architecture of the basic cell, the first implementation of a prototype based on the proposed system and examples of configuration of the neural system are described.