Online training and pruning of multi-wavelength photonic neural networks

Abstract: CMOS-compatible photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are emerging as a promising platform in AI computing. Owing to the compact footprint of microring resonators (MRRs) and the enhanced interconnect efficiency enabled by wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), MRR-based photonic neural networks (PNNs) are particularly promising for large-scale integration. However, the scalability and energy efficiency of such systems are fundamentally limited by the MRR resonance wavelength variations induced by fabrication process variations (FPVs) and environmental fluctuations. Existing solutions use post-fabrication approaches or thermo-optic tuning, incurring high control power and additional process complexity. In this work, we introduce an online training and pruning method that addresses this challenge, adapting to FPV-induced and thermally induced shifts in MRR resonance wavelength. By incorporating a power-aware pruning term into the conventional loss function, our approach simultaneously optimizes the PNN accuracy and the total power consumption for MRR tuning. In proof-of-concept on-chip experiments on the Iris dataset, our system PNNs can adaptively train to maintain a 96% classification accuracy, while achieving a 44.7% reduction in tuning power via pruning. Additionally, our approach reduces the power consumption by orders-of-magnitude on larger datasets. By addressing chip-to-chip variation and minimizing power requirements, our approach significantly improves the scalability and energy efficiency of MRR-based integrated analog photonic processors, paving the way for large-scale PICs to enable versatile applications including neural networks, photonic switching, LiDAR, and radio-frequency beamforming.