Large-Scale Integrated Photonics for Accelerated Communication andComputing
Raymond G. Beausoleil
Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto, CA, USA
ABSTRACTThe massive explosion in data acquisition, processing, and archiving, hindered by the end of Moore’s Law,creates an opportunity for a complete redesign of the information technology stack, including hardware systemarchitectures, devices, networks, and software to enable future computing systems with multi-exascale
performance—and beyond. Key to success in this challenging endeavor will be the paradigm shift of movingfrom a processor-centric to a memory-centric approach. Architectural changes are necessary to overcome thelimitations of the traditional compute-centric model, and will require new network layouts (e.g., Hyper-X) andnew high-performance memory-addressing protocols (e.g., Gen-Z) that rely on a high-bandwidth and energyefficient photonic interconnect. We will describe the state-of-the-art in datacom photonics and present theadvances that will be necessary—and are already appearing in R&D laboratories—to enable memory-centriccomputing at scale.
Memory-centric computing would be an ideal heterogeneous platform for in-memory hardware acceleratorsthat can be brought to bear on specific problems of scientific, engineering, or industrial interest. Ideally, a mature
software ecosystem would simplify the design of a plug-and-play network interface that would allow users tocompare the performance of the most advanced accelerators. We will describe such an accelerator—a coherent
optical Ising machine--that targets NP-hard problems that scale exponentially as a function of system size and arecommon to applications such as traffic flow optimization, supply chain management, airline scheduling, andDNA sequencing. Optical Ising machines based on symmetry-breaking in pulsed optical parametric oscillators
have already been shown to outperform a commercially-available quantum annealer, and there is good reason tobelieve that integrated photonic implementations of this approach can achieve similar results.
BIOGRAPHY
Ray Beausoleil is a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Senior Fellow and a Senior Vice President, and anAdjunct Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. At HPE, he leads the Large-Scale Integrated
Photonics research group, and is responsible for research on the applications of optics at the micro/nanoscale tohigh-performance classical and quantum information processing. His current projects include photonic
interconnects for exascale computing, and low-power complex nanophotonic circuits. Ray received the Bachelorof Science with Honors in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1980, and his Ph.D. in Physics
from Stanford in 1986 as a member of Ted Hänsch’s research group. In 1996, Ray became a member of thetechnical staff at HP Laboratories. Among his early accomplishments at HP, he invented the optical papernavigation algorithms incorporated into the HP/Agilent optical mouse, and now HP's large-format printers. He
has published over 300 papers and conference proceedings and five book chapters. He has over 140 patents
issued, and over three dozen pending. He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the OpticalSociety of America, and the recipient of the 2016 APS Distinguished Lectureship on the Applications of Physics.