Beyond Moore’s Law: Unlocking AGI’s Potential with Photonic Computing

Moore’s Law is Dead: The Photonic Path Toward AGI

Moore’s Law, which predicted the doubling of computing capacity approximately every two years, has shown signs of slowing down since 2018. This stagnation is attributed to the physical limitations of silicon-based chips, which are reaching their saturation point in terms of miniaturization and energy efficiency. The most promising path to achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) sustainably is through Photonic Computing.

What is Photonic Computing?

Photonic Computing leverages light waves (in the form of photons) instead of electronic signals (or radio waves) for processing, manipulating, and transferring information. This allows for operations at ultra-high speeds (potentially 10x to 100x faster than current technologies) while consuming significantly less energy (up to 400x lower energy consumption in specific scenarios) compared to traditional silicon-based systems​

The Limitations of Current Digital Processors

State-of-the-art processors, including advanced CPUs and GPUs, such as the Intel Core i9-14900KS, operate at clock speeds ranging from 5 GHz to 6 GHz. While impressive, these processors consume significant energy, especially for signal propagation over longer distances, which limits scalability for tasks like AI model training​# Groundbreaking Developments in Photonic Computing

1. Early Concepts and Recent Innovations:
   • The concept of using light for computing has been explored since the 1970s. However, recent breakthroughs have demonstrated its practical viability.
2. Lithium Niobate Microwave Photonic Processing Engine:
   • The Integrated Lithium Niobate Microwave Photonic Processing Engine is a recent innovation that demonstrates the use of light waves for scalable, high-performance computing. It achieves ultrahigh-speed analog computations with low power consumption, showcasing applications such as image edge detection, UWB signal generation, and solving differential equations
   • Lightmatter’s Passage platform leverages silicon photonics to interconnect up to 48 industrial silicon chipsusing waveguides on a 200 mm x 200 mm die. The platform achieves:
     • 1.024 Tbps data rate per tile for its first generation.
     • A next-generation version with 256 fiber channels, potentially achieving 100 Tbps of data transfer.
   • This innovation demonstrates how photonic interconnects can drastically improve data center efficiency and scalability to AGI with Photonic Computing

The promise of Photonic Computing lies in its ability to overcome the bottlenecks of traditional digital processors. With breakthroughs like Lightmatter’s Passage and lithium niobate platforms, photonic computing can provide the computational efficiency and scalability needed to develop fully autonomous AGI systems.

Reference:

1. Integrated lithium niobate microwave photonic processing engine [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.14415]
2. Clock rate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_rate#:~:text=The%20highest%20base%20clock%20rate,was%20released%20in%20Q1%202024.] 
3. Lightmatter and GlobalFoundries® Partner to Mass Produce Passage™ Platform [https://lightmatter.co/lightmatter-and-globalfoundries-partner-to-mass-produce-passage-platform/?utm_source=chatgpt.com]