Photonic neural networks represent a promising technology that could revolutionize the way businesses approach machine learning and artificial intelligence systems.
Researchers at Politecnico di Milano earlier this year announced a breakthrough in photonic neural networks. They developed training strategies for photonic neurons similar to those used for conventional neural networks. This means that the photonic “brain” can learn quickly and accurately and achieve precision comparable to that of a traditional neural network but with considerable energy savings.
Creating energy-efficient neural networks
Neural networks are a type of technology inspired by the way the human brain works. Developers can use them in machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to mimic human decision making. Neural networks analyze data and adapt their own behavior based on past experiences–making them useful for a wide range of applications–but they also require a lot of energy to train and deploy. This makes them costly and inefficient for the typical company to integrate into operations.
See also: MIT Scientists Attempt To Make Neural Networks More Efficient
To solve this obstacle, the Politecnico di Milano team has been working on developing photonic circuits, which are highly energy-efficient and can be used to build photonic neural networks. These networks use light to perform calculations quickly and efficiently, and their energy consumption grows much more slowly than traditional neural networks.
According to the team, the photonic accelerator in the chip allows calculations to be carried out very quickly and efficiently using a programmable grid of silicon interferometers. The calculation time is equal to the transit time of light in a chip a few millimeters in size, which is less than a billionth of a second. The work done was presented in a paper published in Science.
See also: Charting a New Course of Neural Networks with Transformers
What the future of holds
This breakthrough has important implications for the development of artificial intelligence and quantum applications. The photonic neural network can also be used as a computing unit for multiple applications where high computational efficiency is required, such as graphics accelerators, mathematical coprocessors, data mining, cryptography, and quantum computers.
Photonic neural networks represent a promising technology that could revolutionize the way we approach machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. Their energy efficiency, speed, and accuracy make them a powerful tool for a wide range of applications, with much potential for a variety of industries seeking digital transformation and AI integrations.
