China makes leap in Optical Computing
China has made significant advances in developing new photonic computer chips, with several notable announcements recently.
Here are the key developments:
Photonic Quantum Chip:
A new photonic quantum chip was jointly developed by the Chip Hub for Integrated Photonics Xplore (CHIPX) and the startup Turing Quantum.
Developers claim it is capable of accelerating complex problem-solving by over a thousandfold and is already being used in industries like aerospace, biomedicine, and finance.
This technology is described as a step towards quantum-classical hybrid architectures and is praised for achieving "co-packaging technology for photons and electronics, chip-level integration and wafer-scale mass production."
Ultra-High Parallel Optical Computing Chip (Meteor-1):
Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) developed the "Meteor-1" chip.
This chip is based on a new ultra-high parallel optical computing architecture that uses over 100 wavelength channels simultaneously to process data, boosting computing power without increasing chip size or frequency.
It boasts a theoretical peak computing power of 2560 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) at a 50 GHz optical clock speed.
Optical Feature Extraction Engine (OFE2):
Researchers at Tsinghua University developed the OFE2, an optical engine that uses light for high-speed feature extraction in AI tasks, operating at 12.5 GHz. It's designed for applications like image processing and digital trading.
These developments highlight China's focus on photonic and optical computing as a way to potentially leapfrog traditional silicon-based chip limitations, especially in the context of AI and quantum computing.
Tech Notes:
Content written and posted by Ken Abbott abbottsystems@gmail.com
Like this post? Please share it by clicking one of the share buttons below!