A Study on Optical Computer Design through Photonics and Electronics Co-Optimization

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K19975
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Information science, computer engineering, and related fields
• Research Institution: Nagoya University (2018-2019); Kyoto University (2017)
• Principal Investigator: Ishihara Tohru 名古屋大学, 情報学研究科, 教授 (30323471)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 計算機システム / 光コンピューティング / 光集積回路

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project is focused on an in-network optical computing. We have developed several optical functional units such as parallel adders, parallel multipliers and optical neural networks. With the optical devices as circuit building blocks, the computational speed of the arithmetic functions is on the order of picosecond since the delay of the single optical device is less than one picosecond. This ultra-low-latency is the basic motivation of using the optical devices for the optical circuit synthesis. Several key techniques for reducing the power consumption of optical circuits have been also developed. With optoelectronic circuit simulation, we have demonstrated the light speed operation of the circuits.

Free Research Field

情報工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

あらゆるものがインターネットに接続されるIoTの時代が到来し、第５世代通信(５Ｇ)技術が実用化されようとしている。５Ｇ以降の６Ｇや７Ｇにおいては、あらゆるものが超低遅延で通信するための技術が必須となる。例えば遠隔医療や自動運転車同士の通信には超低遅延演算が最重要技術となる。本研究課題は、光の速度で演算を行う光コンピューティングの基礎設計技術を世界に先駆けて開発した。産業的にも学術的にもその意義は大きい。