A cutting-edge AI acceleration platform powered by light rather than electricity could revolutionize how AI is trained and deployed.
Using photonic integrated circuits made from advanced III-V semiconductors, researchers have developed a system that vastly outperforms traditional silicon GPUs in both energy efficiency and speed. This technology could not only lower energy costs but also scale AI to new levels of performance, potentially transforming everything from data centers to future smart systems.
The AI Boom and Its Infrastructure Challenges
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming a wide range of industries. Powered by deep learning and vast datasets, AI systems require enormous computing power to train and operate. Today, most of this work relies on graphical processing units (GPUs), but their high energy consumption and limited scalability pose significant challenges. To support future growth in AI, more efficient and sustainable hardware solutions are needed.
A Leap Forward: Photonic Circuits for AI
A recent study published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics introduces a promising alternative: an AI acceleration platform built on photonic integrated circuits (PICs). These optical chips offer better scalability and energy efficiency than traditional, GPU-based systems. Led by Dr. Bassem Tossoun, Senior Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Labs, the research shows how PICs that incorporate III-V compound semiconductors can run AI workloads faster and with far less energy.
Unlike conventional hardware, which uses electronic distributed neural networks (DNNs), this new approach uses optical neural networks (ONNs), circuits that compute with light instead of electricity. Because they operate at the speed of light and minimize energy loss, ONNs hold great potential for accelerating AI more efficiently.
“While silicon photonics are easy to manufacture, they are difficult to scale for complex integrated circuits. Our device platform can be used as the building blocks for photonic accelerators with far greater energy efficiency and scalability than the current state-of-the-art,” explains Dr. Tossoun.
The team used a heterogeneous integration approach to fabricate the hardware. This included the use of silicon photonics along with III-V compound semiconductors that functionally integrate lasers and optical amplifiers to reduce optical losses and improve scalability. III-V semiconductors facilitate the creation of PICs with greater density and complexity. PICs utilizing these semiconductors can run all operations required for supporting neural networks, making them prime candidates for next-generation AI accelerator hardware.
How the Platform Was Fabricated
The fabrication started with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers that have a 400 nm-thick silicon layer. Lithography and dry etching were followed by doping for metal oxide semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) devices and avalanche photodiodes (APDs). Next, selective growth of silicon and germanium was performed to form absorption, charge, and multiplication layers of the APD. III-V compound semiconductors (such as InP or GaAs) were then integrated onto the silicon platform using die-to-wafer bonding. A thin gate oxide layer (Al₂O₃ or HfO₂) was added to improve device efficiency, and finally a thick dielectric layer was deposited for encapsulation and thermal stability.
A New Frontier in AI Hardware
“The heterogeneous III/V-on-SOI platform provides all essential components required to develop photonic and optoelectronic computing architectures for AI/ML acceleration. This is particularly relevant for analog ML photonic accelerators, which use continuous analog values for data representation,” Dr. Tossoun notes.
This unique photonic platform can achieve wafer-scale integration of all of the various devices required to build an optical neural network on one single photonic chip, including active devices such as on-chip lasers and amplifiers, high-speed photodetectors, energy-efficient modulators, and non-volatile phase shifters. This enables the development of TONN-based accelerators with a footprint-energy efficiency that is 2.9 × 10² times greater than other photonic platforms and 1.4 × 10² times greater than the most advanced digital electronics.
Transforming AI with Light-Speed Efficiency
This is indeed a breakthrough technology for AI/ML acceleration, reducing energy costs, improving computational efficiency, and enabling future AI-driven applications in various fields. Going forward, this technology will enable datacenters to accommodate more AI workloads and help solve several optimization problems.
The platform will be addressing computational and energy challenges, paving the way for robust and sustainable AI accelerator hardware in the future!
Reference: “Large-Scale Integrated Photonic Device Platform for Energy-Efficient AI/ML Accelerators” by Bassem Tossoun, Xian Xiao, Stanley Cheung, Yuan Yuan, Yiwei Peng, Sudharsanan Srinivasan, George Giamougiannis, Zhihong Huang, Prerana Singaraju, Yanir London, Matěj Hejda, Sri Priya Sundararajan, Yingtao Hu, Zheng Gong, Jongseo Baek, Antoine Descos, Morten Kapusta, Fabian Böhm, Thomas Van Vaerenbergh, Marco Fiorentino, Geza Kurczveil, Di Liang and Raymond G. Beausoleil, 9 January 2025, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.
DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2025.3527904
News
Scientists Flip a Gut Virus “Kill Switch” – Expose a Hidden Threat in Antibiotic Treatment
Scientists have long known that bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, live in our gut, but exactly what they do has remained elusive. Researchers developed a clever mouse model that can temporarily eliminate these phages [...]
Enhanced Antibacterial Polylactic Acid-Curcumin Nanofibers for Wound Dressing
Background Wound healing is a complex physiological process that can be compromised by infection and impaired tissue regeneration. Conventional dressings, typically made from natural fibers such as cotton or linen, offer limited functionality. Nanofiber [...]
Global Nanomaterial Regulation: A Country-by-Country Comparison
Nanomaterials are materials with at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres (about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair). Because of their tiny size, they have unique properties that can be useful in [...]
Pandemic Potential: Scientists Discover 3 Hotspots of Deadly Emerging Disease in the US
Virginia Tech researchers discovered six new rodent carriers of hantavirus and identified U.S. hotspots, highlighting the virus’s adaptability and the impact of climate and ecology on its spread. Hantavirus recently drew public attention following reports [...]
Studies detail high rates of long COVID among healthcare, dental workers
Researchers have estimated approximately 8% of Americas have ever experienced long COVID, or lasting symptoms, following an acute COVID-19 infection. Now two recent international studies suggest that the percentage is much higher among healthcare workers [...]
Melting Arctic Ice May Unleash Ancient Deadly Diseases, Scientists Warn
Melting Arctic ice increases human and animal interactions, raising the risk of infectious disease spread. Researchers urge early intervention and surveillance. Climate change is opening new pathways for the spread of infectious diseases such [...]
Scientists May Have Found a Secret Weapon To Stop Pancreatic Cancer Before It Starts
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have found that blocking the FGFR2 and EGFR genes can stop early-stage pancreatic cancer from progressing, offering a promising path toward prevention. Pancreatic cancer is expected to become [...]
Breakthrough Drug Restores Vision: Researchers Successfully Reverse Retinal Damage
Blocking the PROX1 protein allowed KAIST researchers to regenerate damaged retinas and restore vision in mice. Vision is one of the most important human senses, yet more than 300 million people around the world are at [...]
Differentiating cancerous and healthy cells through motion analysis
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found that the motion of unlabeled cells can be used to tell whether they are cancerous or healthy. They observed malignant fibrosarcoma [...]
This Tiny Cellular Gate Could Be the Key to Curing Cancer – And Regrowing Hair
After more than five decades of mystery, scientists have finally unveiled the detailed structure and function of a long-theorized molecular machine in our mitochondria — the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier. This microscopic gatekeeper controls how [...]
Unlocking Vision’s Secrets: Researchers Reveal 3D Structure of Key Eye Protein
Researchers have uncovered the 3D structure of RBP3, a key protein in vision, revealing how it transports retinoids and fatty acids and how its dysfunction may lead to retinal diseases. Proteins play a critical [...]
5 Key Facts About Nanoplastics and How They Affect the Human Body
Nanoplastics are typically defined as plastic particles smaller than 1000 nanometers. These particles are increasingly being detected in human tissues: they can bypass biological barriers, accumulate in organs, and may influence health in ways [...]
Measles Is Back: Doctors Warn of Dangerous Surge Across the U.S.
Parents are encouraged to contact their pediatrician if their child has been exposed to measles or is showing symptoms. Pediatric infectious disease experts are emphasizing the critical importance of measles vaccination, as the highly [...]
AI at the Speed of Light: How Silicon Photonics Are Reinventing Hardware
A cutting-edge AI acceleration platform powered by light rather than electricity could revolutionize how AI is trained and deployed. Using photonic integrated circuits made from advanced III-V semiconductors, researchers have developed a system that vastly [...]
A Grain of Brain, 523 Million Synapses, Most Complicated Neuroscience Experiment Ever Attempted
A team of over 150 scientists has achieved what once seemed impossible: a complete wiring and activity map of a tiny section of a mammalian brain. This feat, part of the MICrONS Project, rivals [...]
The Secret “Radar” Bacteria Use To Outsmart Their Enemies
A chemical radar allows bacteria to sense and eliminate predators. Investigating how microorganisms communicate deepens our understanding of the complex ecological interactions that shape our environment is an area of key focus for the [...]
