Fastest neuromorphic processor

A photonic neuromorphic processor demonstrates record speed capability over 1 million spoken digits recognized per second... 

phase NTCDuring the CLEO conference in Munich (May, 12th-17th 2013), FEMTO-ST (Maxime Jacquot's talk, related to Antonio Baylon-Fuentes PhD thesis) has reported the fastest photonic neuromorphic processor ever reported. The setup is inspired from a previous experiment designed at FEMTO-ST, in the framework high speed optical chaos communications (FP6 PICASSO project). The setup was known to enable the generation of an accurately controlled chaotic motion of the phase of a laser light beam, which chaotic light was used to demonstrate the state-of-the-art encryption speed for optical chaos communication (@10Gb/s, first field experiment on the Lumière brothers network of the city of Besançon).

In the framework of the PHOCUS FP7 European project, FEMTO-ST was intended to demonstrate a high speed processing capability of a neuromorphic photonic processor, thanks to a similar experimental approach, worldwide unique in terms of well controlled broadband nonlinear dynamics. Exploiting the concepts of Reservoir Computing, which were successfully and recently adapted to delay dynamics, thus demonstrating the first photonic neuromorphic computer, FEMTO-ST achieved a record speech recognition speed up to 1 Million spoken digit recognized per second.

high speed optoelectronic brain

Results have been published in Physical Review X in February 2017. It was selected for a Physics Viewpoint, as ca. 100 APS articles picked from the 18,000 ones published every year by APS. Our article was also mentioned as a Research Highlight in Nature.

The topic is currently (2015-2019) supported by the French funding agency, ANR, under the call OH-RISQUE, with the BiPhoProc project (ANR-14-OHRI-0002-02).