Journal article : Review
Phase-change materials for energy-efficient photonic memory and computing
- Abstract:
- Neuromorphic algorithms achieve remarkable performance milestones in tasks where humans have traditionally excelled. The breadth of data generated by these paradigms is, however, unsustainable by conventional computing chips. In-memory computing hardware aims to mimic biological neural networks and has emerged as a viable path in overcoming fundamental limitations of the von Neumann architecture. By eliminating the latency and energy losses associated with transferring data between the memory and central processing unit (CPU), these systems promise to improve on both speed and energy. Photonic implementations using on-chip, nonvolatile memories are particularly promising as they aim to deliver energy-efficient, high-speed, and high-density data processing within the photonic memory with the multiplexing advantages of optics. In this article, we overview recent progress in this direction that integrates phase-change material (PCM) memory elements with integrated optoelectronics. We compare performances of PCM devices using optoelectronic programming schemes and show that energy consumption can be significantly reduced to 60 pJ using picosecond (ps) optical pulse programming and plasmonic nanogap devices with a programming speed approaching 1 GHz. With these energy-efficient waveguide memories, concepts of in-memory photonic computing are implemented based on crossbar arrays. Compared with digital electronic accelerators: application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), photonic cores promise 1−3 orders higher compute density and energy efficiency, although much more work toward commercialization is still required. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.2MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1557/s43577-022-00358-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- MRS Bulletin More from this journal
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 502-510
- Publication date:
- 2022-07-27
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-06-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1938-1425
- ISSN:
-
0883-7694
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
-
Review
- Pubs id:
-
1272757
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1272757
- Deposit date:
-
2024-05-20
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Zhou et al
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © 2022, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record