An all-optical neural network on a single chip

A team of researchers from the University of Münster, the University of Oxford and the University of Exeter has built an all-optical neural network on a single chip. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their chip, which has no optical-to-electronic conversions, and how well it worked. Geoffrey Burr with IBM Research – Almaden has published a News and Views piece discussing the work by the team in the same journal issue. Modern computers run on electricity--it powers devices and serves as a storage and data medium. But for several decades, scientists have wondered if it might be possible to use light as the data medium--crunching photons instead of electrons.