Photonic AI Processor (PHASOR)

Bascom Hunter proposes a Photonic AI Processor (PHASOR) to deliver automatic target recognition (ATR) at a rate of 75,000 frames per second (FPS) using 4k resolution images. PHASOR will deliver these results in a 1U form factor using a combination of Neuromorphic Processors in the form of FPGAs and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). In previous work, Bascom Hunter, partnering with Princeton University, demonstrated the performance of Matrix Vectro Multiplication (MVM) using PICs. We were able to implement 2x10 photonic arrays. The microring resonator (MRR)-based design was able to achieve a matrix loading speed of 2 Gbps, an input vector loading speed of 24 Gbps and an energy consumption per multiply and accumulate (MAC) operation of 1 pJ/bit. With a 2x2 matrix, we have shown computational performance of 0.16 Terra Operations Per Second (TOPS) and a latency of 200 ps. The latency of 200 ps can be compared to Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) latency of 10 ms. In Phase II, we will be laying the groundwork for the PHASOR product. We will be utilizing the previously designed 2x10 photonic MVM to create a CNN for MNIST classification. Our proposed design can implement a 4x4 MVM kernel (utilizing two 2x10 PICs) with a modulated laser input at 10 GSps (Vector update speed) and an MRR update at 1 GSps (Matrix update speed). We expect the 4x4 kernel in Phase II to provide 150k FPS for the MNIST dataset when using a stride of 1.