Calculating with light using a chip-scale all-optical abacus

Abstract

Machines that simultaneously process and store multistate data at one and the same location can provide a new class of fast, powerful and efficient general-purpose computers. We demonstrate the central element of an all-optical calculator, a photonic abacus, which provides multistate compute-and-store operation by integrating functional phase-change materials with nanophotonic chips. With picosecond optical pulses we perform the fundamental arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, including a carryover into multiple cells. This basic processing unit is embedded into a scalable phase-change photonic network and addressed optically through a two-pulse random access scheme. Our framework provides first steps towards light-based non-von Neumann arithmetic.