What does the Centre do?
At the Centre for Neuromorphic Photonics, we research and develop artificial intelligence devices inspired by the human brain structure and functioning. Instead of a separate processor and memory, our devices combine computing and memory into artificial neurons that, unlike biological structures, use photonic instead of electronic signals. Why do we research this? Because photonic (light) signals enable higher operating speed, higher processing power and lower energy consumption.
Our work includes research into future AI technologies with the aim of overcoming the limitations relating to the energy efficiency of operations, memory capacity and calculation speed, imposed by the development of robotics, autonomous vehicles and chatbots. The hardware accelerators we are working on are widely used in biology, medicine, economics, meteorology, energy and all other areas that require the processing of a large amount of data.