Photonics-enabled spiking timing-dependent convolutional neural network for real-time image classification

Abstract

A photonics-enabled spiking timing-dependent convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed by manipulating photonics multidimensional parameters in terms of wavelength, temporal and spatial, which breaks the traditional CNN architecture mapping from a spatially parallel to a time-dependent series structure. The proposed CNN with the application of real-time image recognition comprises a photonics convolution processor to accelerate the computing and an involved electronic full connection to execute the classification task. A timing-dependent series of matrix-matrix operations is conducted in the photonics convolution processor that can be achieved based on multidimensional multiplexing by the accumulation of carriers from an active mode-locked laser, dispersion latency induced by a dispersion compensation fiber, and wavelength spatial separation via a waveshaper. Incorporated with the electronic full connection, a photonics-enabled CNN is proven to perform a real-time recognition task on the MNIST database of handwritten digits with a prediction accuracy of 90.04%. Photonics enables conventional neural networks to accelerate machine learning and neuromorphic computing and has the potential to be widely used in information processing and computing, such as goods classification, vowel recognition, and speech identification.