Scaling up silicon photonic-based accelerators: Challenges and opportunities

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Abstract

Digital accelerators in the latest generation of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor processes support, multiply, and accumulate (MAC) operations at energy efficiencies spanning 10-100 fJ/Op. However, the operating speed for such MAC operations is often limited to a few hundreds of MHz. Optical or optoelectronic MAC operations on today's SOI-based silicon photonic integrated circuit platforms can be realized at a speed of tens of GHz, leading to much lower latency and higher throughput. In this Perspective, we study the energy efficiency of integrated silicon photonic MAC circuits based on Mach-Zehnder modulators and microring resonators. We describe the bounds on energy efficiency and scaling limits for N × N optical networks with today's technology based on the optical and electrical link budget. We also describe research directions that can overcome the current limitations.

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Al-Qadasi, M. A., Chrostowski, L., Shastri, B. J., & Shekhar, S. (2022). Scaling up silicon photonic-based accelerators: Challenges and opportunities. APL Photonics, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0070992

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