Scientists create brain-like photonic microchips
Super fast integrated photonic circuits mimic the way the human brain works to store and process information
Researchers from Oxford, Muenster and Exeter Universities have made a pioneering breakthrough by developing photonic integrated chips that imitate the way the brain's synapses operate. The research paper 'On-chip photonic synapse' is published in Science Advances on September 27 2017.
Crucially, their photonic synapses can operate at speeds a thousand times faster than those of the human brain. The team believe that the research could pave the way for a new age of computing, where machines work and think in a similar way to the human brain, while at the same time exploiting the speed and power efficiency of photonic systems.
Harish Bhaskaran from Oxford University and who led the team said: "The development of computers that work more like the human brain has been a holy grail of scientists for decades. Via a network of neurons and synapses the brain can process and store vast amounts of information simultaneously, using only a few tens of Watts of power. Conventional computers can't come close to this sort of performance."
David Wright, co-author from the University of Exeter, also explained: "Electronic computers are relatively slow, and the faster we make them the more power they consume. Conventional computers are also pretty 'dumb', with none of the in-built learning and parallel processing capabilities of the human brain. We tackle both of these issues here - not only by developing not only new brain-like computer architectures, but also by working in the optical domain to leverage the huge speed and power advantages of the upcoming silicon photonics revolution."
Wolfram Pernice, a co-author of the paper from the University of Muenster added: "Since synapses outnumber neurons in the brain by around 10,000 to 1, any brain-like computer needs to be able to replicate some form of synaptic mimic. That is what we have done here."
