We focus on photonic approximate computing, highlighting the many-level expression ability of photonics. Existing digital computers proceed with a per-bit operation on a signal. By contrast, our approximate computing proceeds operations for many data on a wavelength simultaneously. This fact enables up to ten-time improvements in compute performance.
The many-level expression ability may not need to be more mature in photonics, which becomes a drawback. In this context, we introduce photonic approximate processing at the levels of algorithm, system software, and computer architecture.
Our approximate computing considers optical-and-electrical integration, i.e., Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) and onboard photonics in order to obtain high-bandwidth I/O. Then, we pioneer integrating of approximate computing and photonic computing for future IT infrastructure.