Photonic Neural Chips Achieve 100x Energy Efficiency Milestone in Real-Time AI Inference
Microchip circuit board glowing with blue and amber light traces in dark tech lab
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As global energy consumption from artificial intelligence datacentres commands urgent international scrutiny, a consortium of optical physicists and microchip architects has unveiled an operational photonic tensor processing unit that computes mathematical matrix multiplications at the speed of light. Operating at room temperature without cryo-cooling, the optical processor delivers 100-fold gains in energy efficiency compared to modern silicon GPUs.
Computing at Light Speed Without Resistance
Traditional semiconductor processors rely on electric currents pulsing through nanoscopic copper interconnects, generating massive resistive heat and requiring gigawatts of c...