Integrated lithium niobate photonic computing circuit based on efficient and high-speed electro-optic conversion

Abstract: Here we show a photonic computing accelerator utilizing a system-level thin-film lithium niobate circuit which overcomes this limitation. Leveraging the strong electro-optic (Pockels) effect and the scalability of this platform, we demonstrate photonic computation at speeds up to 1.36 TOPS while consuming 0.057 pJ/OP. Our system features more than 100 thin-film lithium niobate high-performance components working synergistically, surpassing state-of-the-art systems on this platform. We further demonstrate binary-classification, handwritten-digit classification, and image classification with remarkable accuracy, showcasing our system's capability of executing real algorithms. Finally, we investigate the opportunities offered by combining our system with a hybrid-integrated distributed feedback laser source and a heterogeneous-integrated modified uni-traveling carrier photodiode. Our results illustrate the promise of thin-film lithium niobate as a computational platform, addressing current bottlenecks in both electronic and photonic computation. Its unique properties of high-performance electro-optic weight encoding and conversion, wafer-scale scalability, and compatibility with integrated lasers and detectors, position thin-film lithium niobate photonics as a valuable complement to silicon photonics, with extensions to applications in ultrafast and power-efficient signal processing and ranging.