PlasmoniAC | Energy- and Size-efficient Ultra-fast Plasmonic Circuits for Neuromorphic Computing Architectures

Original description

PlasmoniAC invests in neuromorphic computing towards sustaining processing power and energy efficiency scaling, adopting the best-in-class material and technology platforms for optimizing computational power, size and energy at every of its constituent functions. It employs the proven high-bandwidth and low-loss credentials of photonic interconnects together with the nm-size memory function of memristor nanoelectronics, bridging them by introducing plasmonics as the ideal technology for offering photonic-level bandwidths and electronic-level footprint computations within ultra-low energy consumption envelopes. Following a holistic hardware/software co-design approach, PlasmoniAC targets the following objectives: i) to elevate plasmonics into a computationally-credible platform with Nx100Gb/s bandwidth, um2-scale size and >1014 MAC/s/W computational energy efficiency, using CMOS compatible BTO and SiOC materials for electro- and thermo-optic computational functions, ii) to blend them via a powerful 3D co-integration platform with SixNy-based photonic interconnects and with non-volatile memristor-based weight control, iii) to fabricate two different sets of 100Gb/s 16- and 8-fan-in linear plasmonic neurons, iv) to deploy a whole new class of plasmo-electronic and nanophotonic activation modules, v) to demonstrate a full-set of sin2(x), ReLU, sigmoid and tanh plasmonic neurons for feed-forward and recurrent neurons, v) to embrace them into a properly adapted Deep Learning training model suite, ultimately delivering a neuromorphic plasmonic software design library, and vi) to apply them on IT security-oriented applications for threat and malware detection. Succeeding in its targets will release a powerful artificial plasmonic neuron suite with up to 3 orders of magnitude higher computational efficiencies per neuron and 1 and 6 orders of magnitude higher energy and footprint efficiencies, respectively, compared to the top state-of-the-art neuromorphic machines.

Status

SIGNED

Url

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/871391

Call topic

ICT-06-2019

Update Date

26-10-2022