GHz-Rate Neuromorphic Photonic Spiking Neural Network with a Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser

Abstract

We report a high-speed (GHz rate) and hardware-friendly Neuromorphic Photonic Spiking Neural Network (pSNN) architecture formed by up to >1000 spiking nodes and built with a single off-the-shelf telecom Vertical-Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL). We demonstrate the successful application of the proposed pSNN architecture to a complex nonlinear classification task, running at sub-nanosecond speeds per spike directly in the optical domain.