DARPA asks labs to outsmart physics with photonic circuits

"It's no lightweight matter. DARPA is putting about $35 million in total funding on the table in the hope that it will spur researchers to work around fundamental physical constraints and build much larger-scale photonic circuits that do more of the computing with light, not electronics. A recent solicitation from the Department of Defense's research arm - the Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) - aims to scale photonics beyond today's narrow demonstrations."

"The current generation of photonic circuits is limited in depth, which restricts their ability to do much beyond single linear mathematical operations. Individual photonic circuits included in larger systems also have to convert optical signals to electronic ones in order to hand them off to other components, essentially eliminating the advantage of nanosecond latency due to the millisecond latency of electronic circuits, which DARPA notes is a 10 6 performance degradation."

DARPA is offering about $35 million through the Photonic Integrated Circuit Architectures for Scalable System Objectives (PICASSO) program to scale photonic integrated circuits. The program seeks circuit-level designs that use today’s photonic components to overcome fundamental physical limitations and enable larger-scale photonic computing. Photonic processing offers greater bandwidth, lower latency, and improved energy efficiency that suit artificial intelligence workloads. Current photonic circuits are shallow and mostly perform single linear operations. Many systems require optical-to-electronic conversions that negate optical latency advantages, producing roughly a 10 6 performance degradation. Proposals must show how design can surmount these constraints without new devices.

Read at Theregister