Optical polarization for ultrafast computing

Descripción del proyecto

Soluciones a la velocidad de la luz para problemas difíciles

A medida que el «hardware» digital se acerca a sus límites de rendimiento, los ordenadores Von-Neumann tradicionales se enfrentan a complejos problemas de optimización combinatoria en ámbitos como las redes y la inteligencia artificial. La necesidad de paradigmas informáticos alternativos es urgente. En este sentido, el proyecto LOOP, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, explora el «hardware» óptico ultrarrápido para resolver estos problemas. Aprovechando la polarización de la luz, el equipo de LOOP crea una máquina Ising óptica que funciona a velocidades de picosegundos, mucho más rápidas que los sistemas actuales. El método utiliza la polarización como oscilador no lineal ultrarrápido para codificar soluciones, proporcionando un mecanismo de cálculo escalable y paralelo. El proyecto LOOP, capaz de resolver problemas de optimización NP-difícil en microsegundos, abre el camino a una nueva era de la informática óptica que supera las limitaciones de la electrónica tradicional.

Objetivo

Computing impacts every aspect of modern science and society. Von-Neumann computers are inefficient in addressing important combinatorial optimizations widespread from networks to artificial intelligence. Finding alternative paradigms to tackle these intractable problems is now vital as digital hardware approaches its ultimate performance limit. A promising strategy maps the optimization in spin models implemented on a physical setup that evolves as a spin system to the solution. This fascinating scheme has recently attracted huge interest, leading to various electronic and optical Ising machines that, however, remain challenging to scale and speed up.

LOOP is an experimental proposal that aims at creating ultrafast optical hardware for combinatorial optimization by exploiting the polarization of light. The optical polarization is a new ingredient in computing that is absent in electronics. The original idea is to use the polarization as an ultrafast nonlinear oscillator that encodes the spin. We demonstrate the concept by controlling polarization bifurcation in third-order nonlinear crystals by electro-optics, enabling a low-power computing mechanism that operates at picosecond. The main goal is the realization of a polarization Ising machine that solves NP-hard optimization problems with thousands of spins in microseconds. The all-optical machine operates orders-of-magnitude faster than state-of-the-art digital and analog hardware. The scheme is fully parallel and scalable by combining polarization dynamics with spatial light modulation. Moreover, the vectorial nature of the polarization allows to surpass the binary operation of Ising machines. We exploit orbits on the Poincar sphere to realize an ultrafast XY machine for continuous optimization, opening a new direction in optical computing.
LOOP is an interdisciplinary program that spans from nonlinear optics to complex science to establish a new computing paradigm for optimization in the post-Moores law era.