An Integrated Photorefractive Analog Matrix-Vector Multiplier for Machine Learning

AI is fueling explosive growth in compute demand that traditional digital chip architectures cannot keep up with. Analog crossbar arrays enable power efficient synaptic signal processing with linear scaling on neural network size. We present a photonic photorefractive crossbar array for neural network training and inference on local analog memory. We discuss the concept and present results based on the first prototype hardware.
This research was funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant numbers 828841 (ChipAI) and 860360 (Post-Digital).