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arXiv · 2107.11814

LightOn Optical Processing Unit: Scaling-up AI and HPC with a Non von Neumann co-processor

Charles Brossollet·Alessandro Cappelli·Igor Carron·Charidimos Chaintoutis·Amélie Chatelain·Laurent Daudet·Sylvain Gigan·Daniel Hesslow·Florent Krzakala·Julien Launay·Safa Mokaadi·Fabien Moreau·Kilian Müller·Ruben Ohana·Gustave Pariente·Iacopo Poli·Elena Tommasone
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Abstract

We introduce LightOn's Optical Processing Unit (OPU), the first photonic AI accelerator chip available on the market for at-scale Non von Neumann computations, reaching 1500 TeraOPS. It relies on a combination of free-space optics with off-the-shelf components, together with a software API allowing a seamless integration within Python-based processing pipelines. We discuss a variety of use cases and hybrid network architectures, with the OPU used in combination of CPU/GPU, and draw a pathway towards "optical advantage".

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Charles Brossollet, Alessandro Cappelli, Igor Carron, Charidimos Chaintoutis, Amélie Chatelain, Laurent Daudet, Sylvain Gigan, Daniel Hesslow, Florent Krzakala, Julien Launay, Safa Mokaadi, Fabien Moreau, Kilian Müller, Ruben Ohana, Gustave Pariente, Iacopo Poli, Elena Tommasone. 2021-07-25. LightOn Optical Processing Unit: Scaling-up AI and HPC with a Non von Neumann co-processor. https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.11814

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