American engineers from the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new microchip that uses light waves instead of electricity for complex mathematical calculations. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Photonics.
According to the creators, their design’s silicon photonic (SiPh) processor was the first of its kind. It allows you to perform vector matrix multiplication, which is the main mathematical operation in the development and operation of neural networks that form the basis of artificial intelligence technologies.
Engineers explained that they were able to achieve results because the thickness of the chipboard is not uniform and varies the thickness within 150 nanometers in certain areas. This approach made it possible to control the distribution of light in specific patterns without adding other materials.
According to scientists, the device can perform complex calculations almost at the speed of light. In addition, the processor architecture guarantees almost complete protection against hacking of systems based on it, since the chip does not need to load confidential information into the working memory of the computer. This is achieved using parallel computing.
“No one can hack a non-existent memory to access your information,” said Associate Professor Firuza Aflatuni, one of the authors of the development.
happened before knownWhen the world’s first stable quantum computer is released.