Interfacing spiking VCSEL-neurons with silicon photonics weight banks towards integrated neuromorphic photonic systems

Spiking neurons and neural networks constitute a fundamental building block for brain-inspired computing, which is posed to benefit significantly from photonic hardware implementations. In this work, we experimentally investigate an interconnected system based on an ultrafast spiking VCSEL-neuron and a silicon photonics (SiPh) integrated micro-ring resonator (MRR) weight bank, and demonstrate two different functional arrangements of these devices. First, we show that MRR weightbanks can be used in conjuction with the spiking VCSEL-neurons to perform amplitude weighting of sub-ns optical spiking signals. Second, we show that a continuous firing VCSEL-neuron can be directly modulated using a locking signal propagated through a single weighting micro-ring, and we utilize this functionality to perform optical spike firing rate-coding via thermal tuning of the micro-ring resonator. Given the significant track record of both integrated weight banks and photonic VCSEL-neurons, we believe these results demonstrate the viability of combining these two classes of devices for use in functional neuromorphic photonic systems.

PDF Abstract
No code implementations yet. Submit your code now

Tasks


Datasets


  Add Datasets introduced or used in this paper

Results from the Paper


  Submit results from this paper to get state-of-the-art GitHub badges and help the community compare results to other papers.

Methods


No methods listed for this paper. Add relevant methods here