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Feb 16, 2024

New chip opens door to AI computing at light speed

Posted by in categories: mathematics, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

University of Pennsylvania engineers have developed a new chip that uses light waves, rather than electricity, to perform the complex math essential to training AI. The chip has the potential to radically accelerate the processing speed of computers while also reducing their energy consumption.

The silicon-photonic (SiPh) chip’s design is the first to bring together Benjamin Franklin Medal Laureate and H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor Nader Engheta’s pioneering research in manipulating materials at the nanoscale to perform mathematical computations using light—the fastest possible means of communication—with the SiPh platform, which uses silicon, the cheap, used to mass-produce computer chips.

The interaction of with matter represents one possible avenue for developing computers that supersede the limitations of today’s chips, which are essentially based on the same principles as chips from the earliest days of the computing revolution in the 1960s.

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